


A Family Affair

by GrumplevonStiltskin (suchadearie)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Rumbelle Christmas in July
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-24
Updated: 2015-07-24
Packaged: 2018-04-11 00:29:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 24,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4413863
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suchadearie/pseuds/GrumplevonStiltskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Belle French comes to Storybrooke to visit her estranged father's grave, desperate to learn something about the man who abandoned her family when she was a child. At the rain-swept cemetery, she meets Teddy, a man with ghosts of his own. In their grief they share a moment of deep intimacy before they part ways. Belle locates her father's apartment only to find that his landlord, Mr. Gold, has already disposed of all of Moe's things, not knowing the man had a daughter. So now she's looking for him, the man who threw away her last chance to find out if her father ever loved her... the man she only knows as Teddy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the lovely Jenitosam during the Rumbelle Christmas in July 2015. Her prompt was "No curse Storybrooke fathers day" - I hope you like it, despite the weird direction it took xD.

The sky is appropriately gray and stormy for his mood, and Gold considers that the weather is the only thing to be thankful for on this Father’s Day, for it means that he can lay down his flowers in relative privacy. Visiting Bae is something he prefers to do on his own, without being watched by the judging eyes of the harpies of this town. Most of all, he doesn’t want to talk.

Even the graves seem to have eyes, watching his slow walk across the field with bated breath. His steps crunch too loud through the heavy air, an unwanted intrusion here, where the dead rest in silent dreams. Gold himself is restless, and the feeling grows with each step bringing him closer to his son’s resting place. He has many things to say, and most of all he regrets that he never said them when Bae was still alive.

The rain the night before has left the ground soft and damp, but Gold doesn’t care when he kneels, grunting with the pain shooting up from his knee. He holds on to his cane with a force that drives jolts of pain between his shoulder blades and sears his arm with the strain. Gold welcomes it.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, Bae,” he murmurs, after placing his flowers on the ground. He always waits, listening into the silence for something to fill the void he carries under his skin, for a sign of forgiveness. Today, just like any other day, it’s nothing but emptiness that answers him, echoing through the dark hollows of his soul.

“You think you have time, and you’re not prepared for it when your time suddenly ends. It’s gone, one moment to another… and you’re never prepared…” His voice cracks. He wipes the wetness from unshed tears from his face, and presses his fingertips to his lips, then to the headstone. Bae won’t feel the kiss, and it’s hardly more than a gesture without meaning.

Gold’s knees creak when he gets up again. He doesn’t care for the stain of dirt on his pants, nor for the dampness seeping through the fabric, unpleasantly cold for a day in June. “Goodbye, boy,” he says, patting the stone one last time, and turns. And as he does, he finds himself face to face with a woman.

Her sudden appearance comes as a shock, ugly and discomforting. Immediately he wonders how long she’s been standing there, and how much she’s heard of his… conversation. She has no business being there, no business listening in on him, and the feeling of being caught at something shameful gives his voice a sharp edge as he snaps “Can I help you?”

She stumbles back, looking so shocked herself that he’s embarrassed by his harshness. Yet, he doesn’t apologize. The fact stands that she’s been creeping up on him, and that shows at least a lack of manners and respect, if nothing else.

“I’m sorry, I… I didn’t want to intrude…”

“You did.” He wasn’t one to let others off the hook. Especially not in a moment like this, so personal and private. Maybe he’s even a bit brusquer than he would normally be.

“Yeah. As I said, I’m sorry. I’m looking for someone.” Her patience seems running thin, too, and Gold takes a deep breath.

“A graveyard is a strange meeting place, and I can assure you that I wouldn’t suggest something like that. I guess you’ll have to keep looking.”

If possible, she looks even more taken aback. “Of course. You’re alive. I’m looking for a _grave_.”

“Oh.” It’s his turn now to be sorry, and he is. “Please, forgive me. That was rude. Maybe I can help you find what… who you’re looking for.” He puts a hand to his chest and bends his head.

She tilts her head and crinkles her nose, and for the first time he notices how _young_ she looks, and how lost. He’s sure she’s not quite as young as her appearance makes believe, for there is a maturity about her face, infinitesimal wrinkles worn in around her lips and eyes that speak of frequent smiles, and a certain fullness, but she can’t be much older than Bae would be now. Twenty-eight, Twenty-nine at the most. Still, she looks like a girl of fifteen, like someone unable to cope with something as simple as finding a grave. Maybe it’s this, the grave she’s looking for, that turns her into the helpless thing she’s presenting him.

“I’m looking for Moe French.”

Gold offers a noncommittal smile, devoid of any hint of his true feelings about the man. “Recently deceased section’s over there,” he says, and that’s probably rather discourteously, too. He points his cane in the general direction and gestures for her to proceed him. Her face darkens, but she doesn’t protest, nor resist. She’s wearing impossibly high heels, decidedly unfit to wander a graveyard, or any terrain, in fact.

“So, how do you know the deceased?” he asks, refusing to call the man by his name. It earns him another glowering look, but he shrugs it off. It’s her fault, really, for startling him and intruding on his privacy.

“He was my father.”

Gold stops in his tracks and stares. There’s nothing that reminds even in the slightest of French and his rough-hewn features in her appearance. And, what’s more, he didn’t know of any daughter, and that was a) unusual, and b) unfortunate. “I didn’t know he had a daughter,” he says, and she looks almost as if he’s slapped her.

“We were estranged.” She whispers it breathless, almost as if in shame, and it’s all it takes to make her more sympathetic than any other human being in a long time.

“I’m sorry, Miss…”

“Belle.” She doesn’t offer a last name, and he supposes that she has her reasons. Just as he has his reasons not to correct her when she extends her hand and says “Mr. Cassidy, I suppose? I saw the name on the grave, and it said… Beloved Son.” She hardly manages to look at him, and he’s glad for that.

“Call me Teddy. Edward, that is, but since we both seem to have family here, we have quite some things in common, I suppose…” No one has called him Teddy in a long time, but he readily offers it to her, and she takes it with a smile. It’s a small smile full of sadness, but it’s beautiful nonetheless. And when she repeats his name, a shiver trickles down his spine and settles between his hip bones like a coiling rattlesnake.

They walk again, slowly, and Gold tries to come up with things to say in harmless conversation. She carries a bouquet, and it appears to be made of wild flowers plucked along the road. Of course, Moe’s been the florist, and Storybrooke doesn’t have a new one yet. He has gotten his flowers out of his own garden, too. Discarding the flowers as an appropriate topic, he says the next best thing, which is, in this case, even worse.

“There was no family at the funeral.” _Stupid_. She’s already said they had been estranged. No need to rub salt into wounds.

“I couldn’t make it. I’ve been to Europe, and I only got the news two weeks after he was already… when it was too late.”

“I’m sorry.”

She doesn’t answer, and they walk the rest of the way in silence. When they are a few graves down the row from Moe’s, he stops, and points her towards it. His stomach drops when she grasps his arm and faces him with her eyes wide in panic.

“Would you come with me? Please?”

It’s an odd request. They don’t even know each other, and it’s hardly his place - in fact, his least of all - to escort her to her father’s grave. Yet, he’s unable to decline. Nodding, he places a hand at the small of her back, guiding her with his fingertips alone, worrying that his palm might feel damp. She’s dressed too thinly, with a skirt that hardly reaches her knees and only a flimsy knit cardigan above her blouse, and when she shivers, he considers offering her his blazer. Another stupid notion, if he’s honest.

He stands in silence by her side while she looks at the grave, offering her the poor comfort of his almost-touch. He knows that it’s not enough when facing that kind of loss, but it’s also too much, too intrusive in a moment too big to comprehend. Maybe it’s because of that that he’s so surprised, even shocked, when she turns and throws herself against his chest, clinging to him like he’s someone she’s known all of her life, someone she trusts and relies upon. He doesn’t know how to handle this much contact, so he awkwardly pats her back and murmurs “There, there.” It takes a full three minutes before she pulls back and wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

“I’m sorry… I wasn’t prepared for that… I mean, I didn’t expect a tombstone.”

“Understandable,” he says, although he understands nothing.

“You know, you know he’s dead and all, but you still expect to recognize him, or to feel something… but that’s just some stone, and a heap of soil… there’s nothing personal here.”

He understands that, at least. He cannot offer comfort, though. “We’ll have to live with never getting an answer, I’m afraid. We may come to the graveside hoping for some kind of forgiveness, an answer to our prayers, but we’ll have to live with the fact that we’ll go forever without answer.” Of that he’s certain, even though he almost wishes he had never said a thing, for Belle crumbles and radiates so much sadness that it’s physically painful to look at her.

“I just wished… I don’t know. I wish he’d told me why I was never good enough. Or, not important enough.”

Gold’s still searching for something consoling to say when she straightens, and puts on a smile. “Oh well. Maybe I’ll find a glimpse of his personality in his belongings.”

He’s glad that she’s looking at the grave rather than him when she says it. He knows exactly that she won’t find anything personal in her father’s belongings, simply because he knows that there are no personal belongings to look through. Because he’s been the one discarding most of it. When there had been no word from any family after a few weeks, he’d thrown away the things that belonged to Moe French. He is a business man, and he isn’t making any money with an empty apartment holding the belongings of a dead man.

Belle starts for the gates, and Gold follows her like a puppy without a better plan. He isn’t angry anymore that she disrupted his privacy. It’s not as if he could have expected an answer to his inner turmoil today of all days.

“Do you miss your son?” Belle asks, startling him out of his brooding. It’s a stupid question, and he frowns.

“Of course. Every day. Every hour. His loss is a constant pain. It doesn’t go away.”

She bites her lip and nods. “Of course. Can you imagine not talking to him if he were still alive? Never call, never even write a card, or just a text?”

So, that’s where she’s coming from. Gold ponders the question. He doesn’t want to hurt her, even though his answer is bound to cause her further disappointment. “I cannot. If I were given the chance to make up for my mistakes, I would grasp it with both hands. But I also know that people are different, and what is true for one doesn’t need to be true for another. Sometimes, there are reasons that keep a family apart, valid reasons. Sometimes it’s just not meant to be.”

They reach the parking lot beyond the gates, and in silent accord, they halt once more.

“I feel so lost,” she says, and he knows she doesn’t mean that she has no idea where to go now. It’s more profound than that, and a feeling he knows only too well. And he’s incredibly sorry that he cannot point her into the right direction, any direction, when she looks at him and her eyes gleam like the star-dotted sky in a cloudless night. So, instead of offering empty trivialities, he reaches for her shoulder and squeezes. Sometimes, human contact is not enough, too little and more upsetting than it’s worth, but sometimes human warmth is the only thing able to help. He supposes that it’s this, the desperate need to feel warmth, contact, the beating heart of another human being, that makes her move into his arms and to her toes, and makes her place her lips on his in a kiss as soft and gentle as droplets of dew forming on leaves in the morning.

He keeps still beneath her lips for a long beat, allows his eyes to flutter shut and allows the air from his lungs to be drawn from him. At last, he allows his own need to show when he opens his lips and deepens the kiss, and when she pulls back, he tightens his grip on her shoulder, if only for the fraction of a heartbeat. But there is no haste in the way she draws back, and so his panic dispels, and he’s able to look at her unafraid, with clear eyes. He licks his bottom lip, searching for her taste, and she does the same.

“Would you hold me for a while?” she asks, and all he can do is nod.

“I will.” He’s holding her hand when they walk to his car at the very end of the parking lot, and after a short moment of hesitation, he opens the door to the back seat and climbs in without letting go of her hand, pulling her in with him. She snuggles up to him, placing an arm around his middle, and for a while, they just sit like that. It’s odd, somehow, and surreal. He should be the last person to give her solace, given who he is. But he also knows how it feels, this desolation, maybe even better than your average citizen, for his own loss is tainted by regret, and by his failings.

It starts raining again, the pitter-patter forming a constant rushing that cuts them off from the rest of the world and locks them inside the car like on an island. They’re alone in this world, and it’s only natural that they kiss again, after a while, and that she starts fumbling with his clothes, opening buttons with clumsy fingers and shoving fabric aside until she reaches his bare skin and treats it with lips and tongue and teeth, mercilessly. He surrenders, reciprocates, with touches just as helpless, as hasty and hungry as hers. He doesn’t think, and her mouth swallows any question between them. She’s all warmth and pulsing heat, all softness and blushes and panting breath, and she helps him when he finds the buttons of her blouse and fumbles them open to bare her flesh. He hasn’t touched anyone in a long while, and when he covers her breasts with his hands and squeezes, it’s almost too much for him. There’s a heart beating under that skin, blood rushing through veins, a voice sitting in a chest and breaking free in a strangled moan when he latches on to her throat and sucks on her skin. She pushes him into the seat and scrambles onto his lap, her knees digging deep into the soft leather padding. His own voice cracks, condensing in a wet groan against her collar bone when she grinds against him. His need flares up, goes from gentle yearning to all-consuming hunger in a heartbeat, singeing his insides like a fire. He pushes at her skirt and works his fingers into her panties while he kisses her, and he moans into her mouth when he finds her slick and hot.

Belle is just as feral, scratching at his belt and pants until she finally manages to open them and peels his hard, yearning prick out of his clothes. There’s hardly enough room to navigate, but she manages to guide him to the right place. Gold pulls her panties aside, and then gasps when she impales herself firmly, without hesitation, without second thought even. Their panting and grunting drowns out the sound of the rain drumming down on the car, and the heat of their frantic coupling condensates on the inside of the car windows and turns them blind.

She cradles his face and kisses him, breath mingling with his, and it won’t take much more for him to spill himself. She’s so warm, liquid, and each time she rolls her hips his skin gets tighter. There is no room for him to move with her, and he has to receive what she’s giving him. It’s not enough, and too much all at once, and he grabs her hips when she plunges down once more, tilts his pelvis, and lets heat and tension wash him away.

Belle whimpers when she realizes that it’s over, that he’s turning soft, no longer giving her the friction she needs, and he’s not even enough strength left to take care of her need. She keeps rolling her hips, rubbing herself to him like a cat, and lastly pushes a hand between their bodies. He feels her knuckles pressed against his soft cock as she rides her hand until she’s finally there, throwing her head back and coming with a long, breathless groan. He holds her as she collapses, rests her face against his shoulder, shivering with the aftershocks of her climax. Gold buries his nose in her damp hair, inhales her scent of fruity shampoo and salty sweat.

It occurs to him that what they just did was dangerous, reckless in so many ways. They could have been seen. They could give each other all kinds of diseases - not that he cares much for his own life, but she is so young - and they haven’t even stopped to discuss contraception. He swallows his groan and screws his eyes shut. Holding another human being in his arms, feeling the contact from skin on skin (and a zipper pressed to his more tender parts), it has carried him away. Now that this so very basic need is fulfilled, his reason returns, and the idiocy of it all makes it hard to breathe. There’s a rest of insanity still residing in his fingertips, though, and he digs them deep into her naked thighs, half afraid she might slip through his fingers like sand.

Belle grunts, shifts awkwardly on his lap, murmurs “Ouch.” Gold has to force himself to let go of her. The fantasy will shatter if he lets go of her, and he’s not ready yet. Facing reality always hurts.

“I, um… I have to go to town and find out where my dad’s stuff is,” she says.

“Of course.”

Belle clambers off his lap. There’s a wet patch on his crotch, mingled fluids dribbled onto his soft cock, obscenely exposed now that she’s left his lap. He hurries to tuck himself back into his trousers, hastily, not caring for the mess, the wetness. He’ll go straight home, take a shower, change - no one will ever look close enough at him to see that he looks as if he pissed his pants.

Belle looks a little more helpless, uncomfortable, and she tries to wipe away the last sticky stains with her bare hands. Gold fumbles his pocket square from his blazer and offers it to her with flaming cheeks.

“Thanks,” she murmurs. He can hardly look at her. This is why sex always should happen in a bedroom with a bathroom nearby.

“So… can I take you to town?” he asks, when she’s halfway cleaned up and presentable again. She gives him back his pocket square, sticky and wet, before she answers.

“I have a car, thanks. I manage.”

He’s glad for that. But when she slides to the door and climbs out of his car, the emptiness rushing in grips him and punches him in the gut. They’re just two strangers that collided through a strange twist of fate, and part of him wants to hold her back and keep her close for a while. He follows her out of the car. It’s still drizzling, not the weather to hold chats under the open sky.

“Do you already know where you’ll stay?” he asks, because he doesn’t know anything else to say that isn’t awkward, although he doesn’t want to know.

“No. First I have to get my father’s things, and then… we’ll see.”

“There’s a bed and breakfast on Main Street.”

Belle tilts her head and brushes a wet strand of hair out of her face. “We don’t have to do this. Small talk, I mean…”

“I know,” he says. He knows nothing.

“My car is over there.” She points over her shoulder at a small Honda of undefinable color. Mostly rust, probably. “I guess I should be going.”

Gold doesn’t hold her back. He waits for her to get into her car and drive off before he moves. There’s a shower waiting for him, and then the town’s worst lasagna as take out. The rain trickles down the inside of his shirt collar, cold and unpleasant, causing him to shiver.


	2. Chapter 2

Sunday is not the right day to reach anyone, so Belle goes straight from the graveyard to her father’s shop and apartment. She doesn’t expect to find it still untouched - after all, it’s been a few weeks since he passed - but maybe she finds a clue where her father’s belongings are stored. She hasn’t told anyone that she’s coming.

The windows of his flower shop are shuttered, and there’s a laminated sign taped to the door: _For rent. Call Mr. Gold_. Belle scribbles the number down on an old receipt that she finds in her purse and flattens against the shutters. Then she looks around. The street looks deserted. The house that holds the shop looks dead. Almost eerie. She walks around it, searching for signs of life, but all the entrances and windows - even those of the flat above the shop - are shuttered. A blind house in the middle of a sleeping town.

There’s no hope of finding anything here, and for a while, Belle sits in her car in front of the shop, while the rain splatters onto the roof with the unsettling crackle of static noise. She already regrets having come at all. Look what it brought her, this useless retrospection. She’s been so unsettled by the sight of her father’s grave - as impersonal as he’s always been in life - that she gave in to the pull of craziness and desperation and slept with a total stranger. In a parking lot, no less.

And what does she even hope to find here? It’s not as if she expects her father to have kept a secret diary where he put down his reasons for never caring for her. Or filled pages after pages with secret pining for his daughter and giving some elusive reason for why he never contacted her.

At last, she turns the key in the ignition and drives off. She needs something to eat, and she needs to find that bed and breakfast Teddy mentioned. She doesn’t allow her thoughts to linger on the man who let her latch on to him for a while and draw some of his warmth. Too embarrassing is it to think of the crazed, wild hunger that seized her and drove reason out of her skull with the force of a jackhammer.

She finds a diner on Main Street, and through the grey veils of rain, the neon lights announce that it’s open. Belle roams her purse for loose change and crumpled dollar notes before she leaves the car. The rain is pouring down so hard now that she uses her knit cardigan as a flimsy shield above her head. It’s soaked before she’s even through the gate, and she runs the last distance to the entrance steps, as good as she can run in four inch heels and blinded by the water in her face. It’s not until the very last moment that she notices the person leaving the diner, a dark form that opens an umbrella into her face and nearly knocks her out with it. It’s too late to duck out of the way, and the pointed tip of the umbrella nearly stabs her between the ribs.

“Oomph.” Belle sees stars and pants, doubles over, and a warm hand grabs her shoulder and keeps her on her feet.

“Careful, dearie…” The voice trails off. It sounds familiar, but Belle has a hard time placing it with all the black dots dancing in her vision. It’s not until she looks up and faces the owner of the umbrella that she recognizes him.

“Teddy…” It’s odd to use his name when she’s never used it before, despite their frantic encounter on the back seat of his car.

He’s blushing. “Belle. I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you.” He holds the umbrella above her, but he’s not so selfless that he disregards his own comfort. When Belle straightens, he’s so close that the scent of him fills her, damp clothes and shampoo. He’s taken a shower since they met. He carries a plastic bag in the same hand that holds his cane. It’s heavy, and Belle can see tinfoil through the plastic.

Her stomach rumbles. It’s been a while since she ate something.

“Are you getting a room?” Teddy asks. Apparently he’s the type of guy who thinks he’s entitled to know everything about you after one meaningless fuck.

“Just something to eat. I guess I’ll sleep in my car.” She doesn’t want to admit that her money will hardly pay for something to eat and a room, but admitting to sleeping in the car gives it probably away regardless. Or it would, to someone using more than a single brain cell.

Apparently Teddy is such a someone. He looks from her to the car, and when he looks back, his eyes are dissecting her, taking in every last detail. Belle lifts her chin and fights against the familiar sensation of shame creeping up her spine. In comparison with his impeccable attire, she looks cheap.

“I have a guest room,” he says. That’s all, and she could brush it off as a statement, something like that’s nice for you, my car has a back seat. But she doesn’t. A dry place to sleep, maybe even the possibility to take a shower and get rid of the last stickiness is too enticing. “I also have the world’s most terrible lasagna in this plastic bag, and I would love to share it with someone.”

She doesn’t believe a word of that, but she also doesn’t care. Food is food, and a bed is a bed.

“Are you a serial killer?” she asks, though, since goodness is rather rare these days and he doesn’t look like the generous kind. No one wearing clothes worth several hundreds looks like that kind.

“I’m not. I’m also not a mono killer.” He smiles, and it tilts his lips into something beautiful.

“I’m not going to sleep with you again.”

“I know. But maybe you can use some company on a day like that. I know I could.”

There’s loneliness in his voice, and a sadness she recognizes, and that is what decides her. “Okay. Maybe I could even use your phone? I have to call a Mr. Gold.”

His smile grows sharper. Mr. Gold is no friend of him, that much she can tell. But he nods and places his warm hand at the small of her back, guiding her away from the diner. “Let’s go, then, before this lasagna grows cold. It doesn’t get better like that.”

Belle drives after him. He leads her to a Victorian house, pink and huge. He probably has more than one guest room to share, and Belle feels even cheaper when she follows him up the porch and inside. She waits, rubbing her wet arms while he takes off his blazer, and she dribbles on the floor. Too late she remembers her back pack with her change of clothes that she left in her car. Teddy notices the little puddle forming at her feet, but he says nothing.

“If you’d like to take a shower first, I can keep the lasagna warm…”

Belle nods. She should probably get her clothes, but she doesn’t want to stalk through the rain again. She doesn’t know how to ask for spare pajamas or something either, and she doesn’t want to appear needier than she is. “I’m just getting my things, then,” she murmurs, and hurries out again. When she pulls her back pack out from the passenger seat and bangs the door shut, she finds Teddy watching her from his porch. He looks a little as if he expects her to bolt. When she doesn’t, and runs back to the house, he smiles like a little boy. It’s almost uncomfortable, and Belle hides behind her back pack when he shows her the guest room and the bathroom on the first floor.

When she comes down again, after showering and putting on sweatpants and a wide shirt, he’s set the table for them, completely with folded cloth napkins and flowers on the table. She’s as out of place in this house as a pigeon in a hawk’s nest. Or like the lasagna, she thinks, when he places a blob of it on the dainty plate in front of her. He serves himself, too, but he picks at it like it’s a two week old road kill.

“Why do you order it if you don’t like it?” she asks after a while. She’s eaten half of her portion already. It’s too salty and consists almost exclusively of rubbery cheese, but Belle isn’t picky. It’s warm, and it fills her stomach, so that’s a win in her books.

Teddy looks up, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “It’s a tradition. We used to have Granny’s lasagna on holidays.”

Belle keeps silent for a while. She hasn’t looked that closely at his son’s headstone, so she doesn’t know how recent his loss is. She also doesn’t want to ask, out of fear of upsetting him. But the silence becomes heavy, and her face grows warm.

“It’s stupid, really, to hold on to this. I never liked Granny’s lasagna.” He shoves his plate back and rubs his forehead. Belle’s afraid he’ll start crying, and she isn’t prepared for that.

“Well, it’s really not the best lasagna I ever had. Are you sure you’re not holding Granny in business with that tradition?”

He stares at her. Slowly, a grin spreads on his face, and it’s a beautiful thing. His teeth glint like fangs, and Belle imagines feeling his bite. The notion flusters her, even more when she remembers how hot his breath felt on her skin, and how it made her shiver. She swallows, and clears her throat.

“I never considered that. But keeping Granny in business is to my own advantage, so -” He stops, mid sentence. “Wine?”

It’s not what he wanted to say, Belle’s sure of that, but she doesn’t know him well enough to follow up on it. So she nods, and sips in silence on the wine he pours her. She’d like to talk about his son, about the things weighing her down, things that usually ask for a friend to share them with. But she doesn’t have friends here, and the intimacy created by a quick fuck doesn’t reach deep enough for this kind of talk, she thinks.

Teddy apparently thinks otherwise. “So… you’ve mentioned you and your father have been estranged. How did that happen?”

“My parents divorced when I was twelve, and I remained with my mother. Dad never called. He just… forgot about me. I wasn’t important enough.” It still hurts, and she’s still very much bitter about it. It grates in her voice.

“He never called?”

“At first, he did. On my birthday, and Christmas. But it stopped pretty soon. I wrote letters, for a while, but nothing ever came back. So one day, I stopped trying…” She pulls her knees up and rests them against the table. Maybe hugging herself, making herself into a ball and resting her chin on her knees will squeeze the bitterness out of her. Like squeezing out a lemon. But all it does is making her feel smaller and more vulnerable. “Part of me hopes to find my letters in his things, stained with tears or something. Or maybe even a response he never sent. Just… something that shows that he did love me. That I am not so wretched that not even my own father found it in himself to love me.”

Teddy swallows heavily, and takes a large gulp of his wine. Of course, her raw vulnerability has to make him uncomfortable. They don’t even know each other, and here she is, baring her innermost fears and insecurities to him. He has to think she’s crazy, and he’ll probably ask her to leave in a moment.

“I’m sorry, that was…” She doesn’t know how to name it, so she just waves her hand.

“No matter…”

Belle sits up straight again and puts her feet on the ground. “Hey, can I use your phone now?”

Teddy chokes, and starts coughing, and Belle wonders if her fast change of topic is too much for him. Maybe he isn’t used to being around young people, or people at all. She hesitates offering help - it seems awkward to slap him on the back or something, and although his face flushes and his eyes water, he still manages to stare at her as if he would dare her to make a move into his direction. So she waits, grabbing the edge of the table and waggling her toes.

“It’s… in the hallway,” he coughs out at last, and Belle hurries to leave him, sparing him (and herself) further embarrassment.

The phone in the hallway is just as antiquated as the rest of his furniture, but equally shiny and well kept. There isn’t a single speck of dust anywhere, and she wonders if he does the cleaning himself, and if so, how much time he spends on it. The house is huge and packed with knick-knacks. The crumpled receipt with the number scribbled onto it looks like dirt on the gleaming sideboard, and she picks it up again as soon as she’s done dialing, afraid it might leave a stain.

It’s an odd coincidence that just as the dialing tone begins to ring, some classical melody starts playing, too. It comes from the coat rack, where Teddy has put up his coat after entering the house. There’s a thump in the dining room, and Teddy comes almost running into the hallway. Belle’s still waiting for Mr. Gold to pick up, and she twists the chord of Teddy’s phone around her finger while she watches him frantically pat down his coat in search of his mobile. He finds it, but he just stares at it. Then he looks from the phone to her, with so much guilt in his eyes that it finally clicks. Belle hangs up, and the melody of Teddy’s mobile ringtone stops playing.

“I don’t understand… Mr. Gold?” At her question, he winces, and the truth shows plainly on his face. “But why not tell me? Why let me -” She stops, and a terrible thought hits her. Maybe the reason why he hasn’t told her, not offered her his help and made everything easy is because… he can’t? Because there is nothing left? “Where are my father’s things?”

He licks his lips and lifts his hands as if he’s reaching for her. Belle steps back, despite the big distance already between them. He lets his hands sink, and looks at the floor.

“They’re gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?”

“There was no record of any family left, so I had the apartment and shop cleared and his belongings…disposed of.”

The truth, the finality of his confession hits her and knocks the breath out of her. There’s nothing left. She’ll never get closure. “All gone,” she whispers, and it’s like the news of her father’s death all over again. But this time, there’s someone she can blame, someone who did this to her. Someone who’s responsible. “It was you!”

“Belle…”

“You did this to me. You took my last chance at finding closure away from me. You threw it away!” She takes step after step towards him, and he shrinks, stutters.

“Belle, that wasn’t my intention!”

“Oh yeah, that does help me. I will never find out anything about my father, I will never find if he really forgot about me, but that’s okay, because it wasn’t your intention!”

She doesn’t want to scream, or to lose her composure like she does, but she can’t help it. It’s too much on this day. Her eyes sting with hot tears, and she’s the little girl again, helpless and rejected for reasons she can’t fathom. And he, Teddy, Mr. Gold, he’s the one turning her into this wretched version of herself.

“I’m so sorry, Belle. I wish I knew a way to make it up to you…” He reaches out once more, and squeezes her shoulder. She wishes so much that she’d heard these words from her father, wishes so much he’d been grown up enough to be an adult, just for once, and reach out to her. Maybe she wouldn’t feel as lost then as she does now. Maybe she would have been able to let go of the hurt little girl inside her, the child that hoped so long till it broke.

“You can’t give me back my childhood, or my father. No one can. All I wanted was closure, but now…” She trails off, closes her eyes. The weight of his hand is heavy and warm on her shoulder, and she longs to be drawn into a warm hug, squished against a broad chest, longs for her father to whisper ‘It’s going to be alright’ into her hair. She yearns for something she’s never going to get. “Now it’s too late.”

Belle wipes his hand away.

“Belle, please, I want to help you.”

“How could you possibly help me? How are you going to give me my closure? How would you possibly make good on what I lost? Do you think you could just play the part of my father for a while and all would be well again?” As she speaks the words, she’s seized by a terrible image, sees herself snuggle up into Teddy’s arm, sees him brush her hair, sees him tickle her nose and tell her how proud he is of her. It’s an idea that sickens her, and yet… and yet. Here she is, yearning for all those needful things she’s never going to get, and there’s Teddy, a father without a child, owing her… “Maybe we could pretend that… if only for a little while…”

“What?” he asks, and his confusion gives his voice a high-pitched edge.

“I want you to be my father for a while. I want you to help me get closure. You owe me.”

“I… what?” he repeats, stupidly, as if what she’s saying is too much for him to comprehend.

“It’s easy, really. You are a father who lost a child. I am a daughter who lost a father. We could help each other.”

“I’ve never been a very good father.”

“Then this is your chance to make it better.”

He gapes at her, moving his mouth like a fish gasping for air, but Belle doesn’t yield. The idea has taken hold of her like a fever, and she’s unable to shake it.


	3. Chapter 3

She has to be insane. There’s no other explanation, and really, he should have seen it sooner; after all, what mentally stable person fucks him on the backseat of his car after only just meeting him? Maybe he didn’t go about things the best way, granted, but asking him to play her father - that takes things way too far. Especially considering that they fucked. It gives the whole thing an even crazier edge. But she looks at him so desperate, so hungry for something he’s sure he can’t give - after all, he failed to give it to his true child, and isn’t that the reason he lost it? - that deep inside him, at the bottom of his rotten soul, something responds; a gnawing thirst so deep that he would drink up a dirty, poisoned well to sate it. He failed Bae, and some perverse part of him wants to make up for it and offer his soul to the child in front of him. For that is what she is right now: not a woman, but a child, forlorn and forsaken. And if he doesn’t take care of her, maybe some other beast will take advantage of her need and break her apart… He can’t let that happen.

“Alright,” he says, but his voice gets almost stuck in his throat. “But don’t call me Daddy. I have a name.”

Some of her fierceness falls off of her; her shoulders slump, and she seems so relieved that she looks even younger. And for a moment, hatred, black and sticky like tar, wells up inside him and burns its way up his gullet. It pertains to himself rather than her, but she’s the trigger, so he isn’t sure it’s really that easily distinguishable. He takes a look at his watch. It’s not even seven.

“How long do you suggest this… charade to go on?”

She bites her lip and shrugs. _Splendid_.

“I don’t know… maybe two weeks? Until it feels… resolved.”

“It?”

“This crack in my heart… it needs to mend.”

“And you think two weeks will be enough for that? My son died four years ago and I still feel cracked and splintered.” _You should shut up_ , he thinks. _Two weeks are an eternity with a mad woman under your roof._

_Two weeks are so little. Hardly any time at all._

“Of course I don’t think that’s enough. But I don’t suppose you’re going to let me stay indefinitely.”

“No. Of course not.” He’s out of breath, although they haven’t moved. They’re still in the hallway, caught between doors. He looks at his watch again. Time has hardly moved at all. “So, what do we do now?”

“Tea? A cup of tea makes everything better.”

He makes a mental note of stocking up on tea. Then he nods, and points her towards the kitchen. He’s not going to let her out of sight. When he’s set up the kettle on the stove and prepares a teapot with black tea - he needs something strong now - the silence gets stuffy. She just stands there, leaning against the kitchen isle, and watches him.

“So, what did you do in Europe? Vacation?” He does his best to keep his voice conversational. It’s hard, and everything feels stilted.

“No. I just finished studying.”

She’s not very forthcoming, and in Gold’s head, the two weeks stretch out indefinitely. “What did you study?”

“Mediaeval studies.”

He takes his time to consider his next question while he fetches two cups from the cabinet. He’s reaching for his cup without thinking, the same one he always uses, easily the ugliest mug amongst his porcelain, but the one he treasures above all others. Bae made that cup, long ago, in what seems to be another life now, and gave it to him on another Father’s Day. It’s glazed blue and a crocodile’s painted on it, in that naive way children draw, leafy green with huge teeth and spikes on its back. The crocodile’s tail forms the handle, and Gold is very careful when he sets the cup down beside the teapot. For Belle, he chooses a dainty cup with worn off roses and a gold edge.

“So why study in Europe?” he asks, when he’s run out of things to occupy his hands with.

“My Mom’s from England. She went back there when my parents separated.”

“So there was an ocean between you and your father? I imagine that makes regular contact quite stressful.”

“But not impossible,” she says, with bitterness etching her tone, and Gold’s grateful that the kettle whistles just then and saves him from pursuing the topic.

He brews the tea and carries it with the cups, sugar and milk on a tray over to the dining table, his cane tucked under his arm, and Belle follows him. She slumps down on her chair again and reaches for his crocodile cup. Gold covers it quickly with his hand, protecting it from her touch. He almost hisses at her, and he can see that he’s been too rash, for she winces and makes a fist, pulling it against her chest. Her knees come up again, and she’s once more forming a tight ball on her chair, like an armadillo in the face of danger.

“That’s mine,” he explains, and he does his best to make his voice soft.

“I’m sorry.”

Gold sits, and places his cup before him. “No matter. Bae made it for me when he was thirteen. I’ve used it ever since.”

Silence settles between them. It’s the awkward silence of strangers in confined space, people that have nothing in common and are too different to easily find a way out of their wordlessness. The prospect of two weeks of this uncomfortable silence pulls at his shoulders and weighs him down.

Her voice is too loud when she speaks again, and Gold winces. “Why did you say you weren’t a good father?” she asks.

He wishes she wouldn’t have asked, wouldn’t force him to revisit that painful subject, but he supposes it’s only natural that she wants to know. “Because I wasn’t. If I had been a good father, and paid some attention to my son, he’d still be alive. But I suppose that cruel deeds result in cruel consequences.”

“What does that mean? Did you… hurt him?” There’s a flicker of uneasiness in her eyes, and Gold quirks his lips. It’s not exactly a smile.

“In a manner of speaking. I never hit him or anything like that, if that’s what you fear. No. I just… never saw him when he was still there. In a way, I was like your father. I didn’t show him that he mattered.”

Belle licks her lips and tilts her teacup, as if she’s in desperate need of something to change the topic, to leave the slippery slope she uncovered. Gold pours them tea, and without asking, he adds milk and sugar to hers. She doesn’t complain.

“How did he die?”

Gold takes a gulp of tea. It steeped too long, but he welcomes the bitterness. “He died too young. I think that is all you need to know.”

“I’m sorry.” It’s quickly becoming her mantra, and he already detests it. There’s nothing she needs to be sorry for.

“So, how do you plan to conduct this… deal?” he asks, intent on giving their conversation a different, less painful direction. Or maybe just different, for he doesn’t know how much pain awaits him in this play.

She’s furrowing her brows and worrying her lips, once more a child before him. “I… don’t know? I was twelve when I lost my father, kind of, and I haven’t had one since. I don’t know how fathers and daughters… work.”

“This makes things so much easier,” he says, just barely refraining from rolling his eyes. “Do you want to play toddler?” The idea nauseates him, and the hair on the back of his hands stands on end. Every breath he takes seems to turn him inside out.

“Dear Lord, no. I’m not going to pretend being a child! I just… I want us to pretend being family, that’s all. Anything else would be weird.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page there.” He bares his teeth in a smile that doesn’t reach much farther than the corners of his mouth.

She frowns. “You’ve been a father. You have to know how it works.”

“Did you not listen? I was a terrible father.”

“So, what exactly was your failure? Maybe knowing what you did wrong will help you preventing doing the same mistake all over again?”

“You’re hardly going to get yourself killed just because I don’t pay attention to you.” It’s out before he can stop himself, and he wishes he never said a thing. She watches him with eyes like dark pools, and he pushes back his chair and gets to his feet. He needs to move, to pace to get rid of the tension prickling under his skin like ants. She follows him with her eyes, opening and closing her mouth as if she wants to say something and thinks better of it.

“My father ignored my existence. I don’t want you to do the same,” she states at last.

It’s something he can understand. How oddly cut out for each other they are, and how incongruous at the same time. She couldn’t have chosen a worse father to mend her cracks and fill her need. “I will try my best not to make the same mistakes with you then.”

“Maybe we can work something out as we go?”

“Maybe.” He wonders if her mother neglected her as well. She’s as awkward as a newborn fawn in this interaction, but that, too, is oddly fitting for a child. It’s on him to make it work, and maybe that’s really something he needs to reconcile with his failure as a parent. “I suppose we could spend the evening watching a movie.” It’s something Bae often wanted to do, something Gold often avoided doing, because he didn’t fancy movies. Now he despises them even more, for it’s something so little that could have made a difference.

“Right,” she says, but there’s hesitance in her tone. “I’m not much of a movie person, though. More of a bookish kind of girl…”

Gold inhales and rubs his forehead. He points his cane towards the couch in the adjoining sitting room. “Then let’s talk about books.”

She follows him, carrying her teacup, and she leaves him the couch and perches on the edge of a single armchair like she’s ready to flee any moment.

“What’s your favorite reading subject?” he asks, a rather generic question, but he hopes to soothe her, distract her from the stilted situation she created. And it works. Her face lights up when she talks about books, so much so that Gold forgets to listen to her words and just stares at her like a fool. He manages to hum in appropriate places and ask the odd question in between, and you wouldn’t even know he isn’t listening. Not to her words, anyway. He likes the sound of her voice (dangerous to be so besotted with the voice of a madwoman), and the dreamy look in her eyes. Her father’s been a fool, but so is he, although for different reasons.

They spend a surprisingly long time talking like this, and it’s already long dark when their tea is gone and Belle falls silent. She looks into her teacup as if she’s surprised to still find it in her hand, and even in the dim light - for Gold hasn’t lighted any lamps while they sat there - he can see the flush creeping up her neck.

“I’m sorry, I held a lecture.”

“Don’t be. It was very enlightening, and I could have stopped you if I wanted.” He reaches over and takes the cup from her. She follows him back into the kitchen like a lost puppy. The silence is back when he rinses their teacups and puts them on a dish rack to dry.

“I suggest we go to bed. I have a shop to run, and we’re going to leave at 7.30.”

“We?”

“Of course you’re free to do whatever you want, but I’m not going to let you stay at my house unattended.” He may be gullible and stupid, but not that stupid.

“Oh. Sure. Not that I’m going to steal anything, but I guess you’re right.”

Gold turns his crocodile cup so that the handle forms a perfect angle to the edge of the drying rack. “Of course I’m right. I’m your father, ain’t I?” He’s dripping with sarcasm, but Belle’s seized by a giggle fit so hard that she’s snorting like a piglet. He raises his brows and waits for the giggling to die down. “I’m glad that this amuses you so much. Now, off to bed.”

The guest room is on the same floor as his bedroom, and they have to use the same bathroom. He waits inside his bedroom until he hears her leave the bathroom again before he ventures out in his pajamas and a robe to brush his teeth and apply lotion to those patches of his skin that are hard and dry. Sadly, there’s no lotion for a man’s soul, and even knowing she’s there, at the end of the hallway, is enough to rub his insides raw. He hasn’t shared the house with anyone since Bae’s gone, and every creak of the floorboards, every soft thud, is like an intrusion as sharp as a smoldering poker prodding him. He rubs more lotion than usual into the skin on his elbows, and still it feels too dry, crackling, flaking. When he’s done, has brushed his teeth and hair, cleaned his ears and nails, he checks his chest, for it is so tight as if a rope is wrapped around it and pulled taut, itching, burning, as though he might develop a rash. There’s nothing obviously wrong, but maybe he’s allergic to something she dragged into the house; he makes a mental note to go to the doctor, then crosses it out again. He knows what’s wrong and there’s no doctor nor psychic needed to find out.

He cracks the bathroom door open to peek out, making sure she’s nowhere near the hall, before he limps back to his bedroom. He avoids the floorboard that creaks like a howling wind, but each step still clicks and moans softly. He’s not afraid of her, he tells himself, of course he isn’t. But there’s something… unhinged about her, and he can picture at least five hundred ways to die that are nicer than at the hands of his house guest. And it’s not that she’s just a little bit unhinged - she’s flapping like a screen door in a hurricane.

He’s just sat down on the edge of his bed, leant his cane against the nightstand and taken off his ring and watch, placing them on his nightstand, when there’s a knock and the door to his bedroom creaks open.

Belle peeks in, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. And what she wants to say seems too big for her mouth, for she worries her lips and at last gives up, leaning her forehead against the door and closing her eyes with a sigh.

“Do you need something?” Gold asks, afraid she might say yes, and need something he can’t provide. She takes his question as an invitation and enters, and his breath gets stuck in his throat at the sight of her. She’s wearing a nightgown of sheer, white batiste with a yoke of delicate lace. It ends mid-thigh and hides absolutely nothing. Maybe she doesn’t realize that the light from the hallway behind her illuminates her every curve, and that the fabric veils her breasts, her stomach and the valley between her thighs so thinly that he can see the darker color of her nipples, the faint blush between her breasts, even the goosebumps on her stomach.

“Something, yes,” she says, and it snaps him out of his breathlessness. She comes closer, sits down by his side, and stares down at her lap. She brought a hairbrush, and she fiddles with it like she’s trying very hard to work out a secret. Gold pulls a corner of his blanket over his own lap. “Maybe it’s inappropriate -”

“Definitely.”

She’s not perturbed by his interruption and continues as if he never said a thing. “- but I feel so lost, and alone, and I was wondering… My mom sometimes brushed my hair, and it always calmed me down, so…”

“You want me to brush your hair?” Of all the things she could want of him, this seems like the worst. Of course, had she asked anything else, that thing would probably be the worst thing imaginable, but the idea of brushing her hair, stroke by stroke, until it shines and bristles, evokes such intimacy and sensuality that his heart stutters and he’s unable to decline. He needs it like air, and when he plucks the brush from her grip without a word and gestures for her to turn her back to him, a heavy, liquid fire settles deep between his bones, stoking a hunger so visceral as if he’s starved for centuries. His hands tremble as he gathers her hair and starts brushing, and he holds his breath as not to breathe onto her skin.

“I think I stopped brushing Bae’s hair when he was ten,” he says, and it’s just as much to distract himself from the way her silken curls glide through his fingers as it is to make conversation. “He was old enough then to do it himself.”

“Did you miss it?”

“Brushing his hair? Not at the time. It seemed so bothersome, and it always ended in tears, because he was so sensitive, but had so much curly hair, and I seemed unable to ever be gentle enough.” He combs through her curls with his fingers before brushing down the strands he just separated.

“You’re doing it well enough now.”

Gold can’t help it. He leans forward, a tiny bit, and he inhales the scent of her hair before he speaks. “That is because you’re a grown woman and learned to tolerate some pain.”

He’s close enough that he could sweep his lips along the shell of her ear if he only turns his head a tiny bit, and he can see her pulse racing under her skin. She holds her breath.

“Pain can be cathartic, but it doesn’t mean I seek it out,” she whispers.

Gold leans back again and resumes brushing her hair, until it shines, and crackles under his touch, and he imagines twisting it into a thick, gleaming rope, wrapping it around his fist to keep her head still while he drags his teeth over her trembling skin, along the curve of her neck and shoulder, to bite and kiss her where they meet.

Not very fatherly, those notions.

“Does this soothe you?” he asks, with his voice hoarse and too high-pitched. Belle sways towards him with every brush stroke, as if he were pulling her closer, reeling her in like a siren caught in his net. He shifts, afraid that if she leans too close, she will become aware of the unpaternal nature of his thoughts. The blanket does little to hide his state.

“It does.”

She’s like a flame, warm and soft and mesmerizing. Gold still fights against the desire to twist her hair around his fist. He would pull her close, would slide his arm around her waist, cup her breast through the flimsy fabric of her nightgown… He shivers, and screws his eyes shut so tight that they hurt, squeezing those images right out of his skull.

“I think we all need physical affection like this sometimes. We need to be touched to feel warm in our skin.” While she speaks, Belle sinks against his side, not unlike a cat, humming and purring, and while the angle makes brushing her harder, the closeness proves her point. He’s warm inside his skin, and his limbs are filled with a heaviness so similar to the drowsiness of near-sleep. And yet, he’s wide awake, aware of every inch of his body that is in contact with hers, feeling the pressure of her weight like an anchor.

He’s stopped brushing her, but he still plays with her hair. Lets it glide through his fingers like silk, and brings a strand to his face, inhaling deeply and pressing it to his lips in a secret kiss. He’s a leech for doing so, but he’s weak, and she’ll never know.

“The thing I remember about my father as if it had been yesterday is his smile when he buttoned up my coat… He looked at me as if I was his world. It was so important that I’d be always properly wrapped, so I couldn’t catch a cold… He closed that last button I always left open, and he placed my scarf around my neck so everything was properly covered up and the cold didn’t have a chance to sneak in and bite me…” She trails off, and he feels her tremble when she takes in a deep breath. She’s swallowing a sob, and it’s like a bucket of ice water poured out onto his lap.

“I just don’t understand why he never looked back…”

“Maybe he felt like he failed you. Maybe he was afraid.” Gold knows that’s how he would feel. If his son was still alive, he would do anything to make up for his failures in the past, but he would be terrified of repeating them - so he’d probably just do nothing. Fear is a curious thing. It slips down your windpipe like a snake and wriggles into the space between your lungs, and it clogs your throat and it keeps squeezing, squeezing, until you don’t remember anymore how it is to breathe freely.

“But shouldn’t you try everything to overcome any fear when it’s for your child? Or was I really not worth it?” There is it again, the child in her voice, and Gold would like to wrap her up in his arms and hold her. He did it too little with his son, and he doesn’t do it now.

“I don’t think your father thought like that.”

Belle moves to turn around and scowl at him. “We’ll never know, right?” She plucks the brush from his hand and slides off the bed.

The shame mutes him, and his inability to offer her comfort paralyzes him. He doesn’t say a thing.

“Well, it’s late. Have a good night, Teddy.”

Gold nods, and claws his empty hands into the blanket over his lap as Belle slips from the room. He doesn’t fall asleep for hours.


	4. Chapter 4

His shop is dark, and the little light coming in catches in glass cases and baubles. It smells of wood polish and brass, a scent immediately familiar. It clings to Teddy, giving his cologne an earthy note of home. He looks at her as if he has no idea what to do with her now that she's in his lair. 

"I could help you?" Belle suggests, even though he looks perfectly capable of taking care of things himself. 

"I don't think I need your help."

"Well, maybe I could do some cleaning..."

"Why don't you do a little tour through Storybrooke and ask about your real father?" His voice is strained. Belle tries not to feel rejected, but she can't help shrinking. 

"Of course." He's right, there's nothing here for her, and finding traces of her father’s life might actually help her find closure. 

She starts with fetching a coffee to go at the diner - the same one where she ran into Teddy the day before. The good thing about small towns is that everyone knows everyone else, and everyone immediately knows when you’re a stranger. And no one feels shy commenting on it. 

“Never seen you around here,” the lady at the diner - Granny, presumably - says, when she shoves the coffee across the counter, and Belle does her best to smile. 

“I’m visiting… someone.” It’s not far from the truth, and Belle has no idea how to put it any better. 

“Nice. Family?” 

It’s only small talk, Belle reminds herself. People in small towns are curious. “Kind of. My father died, and I came here to take care of his things.” 

Some of the change Belle has placed on the counter to pay for her coffee slips through the woman’s fingers, and she tries to cover it up with a nervous smile. “Didn’t know Moe French had a daughter.” 

Belle doesn’t question how the woman knows immediately who she’s talking about. It’s the nature of small towns, and even though they might not know that Moe French had had a daughter, every one of them probably knew him better than Belle. She tries not to resent them for it. “We were estranged,” she said, and it still fills her with the same bitterness as the first time, when she said it to Teddy. 

The woman narrows her eyes. “Where are you staying, girl? Gold’s already shut down Moe’s shop and flat and disposed most of his things.” 

There’s a gruffness in the way she states that, and Belle wonders if it is because she dislikes Teddy or disapproves of his actions. Maybe it’s better not to admit that she’s staying with him. “What do you mean, most of it?” 

“Some of his friends took some keepsakes after the funeral. Nothing of value, of course, since there was nothing, but you can believe me, people here are like magpies when it comes to shiny things… No more than five, Leroy!” She slaps the counter, and one of the patrons sitting on a barstool flinches. He grumbles when he pulls a handful of ketchup packets out of his vest and drops them on the counter. 

“Do you know who took something?” A tiny flicker of hope forms inside Belle’s chest. Maybe she’ll find something after all. 

“No. You’d have to ask the people that were at the funeral. I only took some of the flowers from his shop, and they’re all gone by now. But Leroy over there was there, too - weren’t you, Leroy?” 

The man, whose face mostly consists of beard and nose, takes a moment to chew and swallow his bacon before he turns on his seat and faces Belle. “So you’re Moe’s girl? Didn’t know he had a daughter.” 

“Yeah. Heard that a lot now.” 

Leroy sniffs and purses his lips, and he tilts his head. Belle holds still while he examines her, refusing to let it get to her. Of course people try to find a familiarity in her features, something that proves her descent. “Don’t look like him. Makes you a lucky girl, I guess.” He shrugs and turns back to his plate.

“Do you have something of him or not?”

Leroy stops the fork laden with bacon and eggs mid air and claps his mouth shut. “Yeah I do. Nothing fancy, mind, but you don’t need something big to remember a friend, right?” 

Belle wants to stomp her foot, but she bites the insides of her cheeks instead. “May I see it?” There’s a tiny tremble in her throat, and she despises it. It’s there too often. 

“Why?”

“Because all his things are gone and I have nothing left to learn about my father and I have no idea who he was.” 

“Alright, sister. Just let me finish my breakfast in peace, alright, then I’ll show you.” He turns his attention back to his plate, and Belle hurries to slip on a stool at his side and be as still as a mouse. But she watches him, follows every movement of his and hardly dares to breathe, while the woman behind the counter watches her with her eyebrows drawn up and her lips quirked. Leroy ignores them both.

“No one gets between Leroy and his bacon,” Granny comments, not without fondness. Leroy only grunts. He doesn’t acknowledge Belle at all until his plate looks as if there has never been any food on it. Belle waits, lips drawn between her teeth, while Leroy wipes grease from his mouth and beard with a paper napkin. 

“You still here, huh?” He says when he’s finished and can no longer avoid her. Belle nods. He hops off his stool, and Belle is surprised to learn that he’s hardly any taller than she is. He pats the counter, and Granny nods. “You coming?” he grunts. 

Belle scrambles down from her stool and follows him. He’s walking fast, and keeping up is a challenge in her heels, so she doesn’t even attempt a conversation. It’s not that Leroy seems interested in any chatting anyway. They haven’t spoken a word when they reach the harbor and Leroy halts beside a boat moored to a small pier. He climbs on board, and only when she doesn’t follow, he looks back. 

“Mi casa es su casa, sister. Come on.” 

Belle is sure that she shouldn’t be climbing on any boats with her shoes, but on the other hand, who knows if Leroy doesn’t just decide he’s had enough of it when she refuses? “Give me a hand,” she says. Leroy rolls his eyes, but he extends a hand, calloused and hard, and helps her climbing on board. Belle follows him below deck into a tiny cabin that holds not much more than a bunk, a cooling box and a fishnet stuffed with clothes. 

“Do you live here?” she asks, trying not to knock her knees against the edge of the bunk. 

“Something wrong with that?”

“No, of course not. It just… lacks a bathroom. And a kitchen…” 

“I eat at Granny’s. And I used to shower at Moe’s.” He flops down on his bed and pulls the cooling box between his feet. Belle hopes he didn’t take a dead fish or something from her father’s freezer. But when he opens the lid of the box, it just holds more, smaller boxes. He shuffles through them and pulls out an old cigar box. “There.”

His smile cleaves his beard in half and displays teeth that look like cut from stone. He places the box on his lap and flips back the lid, and when he notices that she’s still standing there, he pats the mattress at his side. “Sit down, I’m not biting.”

Belle squeezes herself awkwardly onto the bed beside him. She has to breathe flatly, for he’s surrounded by a rather manly scent, and she wonders if he’s showered at all since her father died. Or changed his clothes at some point over the last three weeks. 

The box on his lap holds a variety of fish baits and hooks, and Leroy pinches one between forefinger and thumb and holds it up, squinting at it. 

“Those were his,” he explains. “He made them with his own two hands, he did.”

“My dad liked fishing?” Belle takes the bait Leroy offers her and tickles the feathers across the back of her hand. There’s a sharp hook hidden between the feathers, and it leaves a tiny scratch on her skin. 

“He did. We used to take the boat out and spend the weekends fishing. Never caught much, though. He used to chase all the fish away with his ranting.”

“What was he ranting about?”

“Fish, mostly. Economy. People. Television programs. Women.”

“Women?” The last bit gives Belle a sting. What if there had been a woman in her father’s life that she doesn’t know about?

“Yeah. He had some on and off thing with…” He claps his mouth shut and clears his throat. 

“With whom?”

“Don’t know, really. He never said. And I wonder if we ever really were friends, since he didn’t tell me about you either.” He picks the bait out of her hand, places it back in the cigar box, claps it shut and stuffs it away. “There. That’s all I have of him.”

  



	5. Chapter 5

When Belle enters his shop again, she looks as if she’s spent a good part of the morning crying, and for the first time, something like a paternal sentiment flares up inside him. Gold wants to hug her and tell her everything’s going to be alright. Of course he doesn’t do it, afraid it might come off as stilted and unnatural - which it would be, without a doubt.

“You look like you need a good cup of tea,” he says. Belle sniffs, and nods. 

Gold goes through to the back to set up a kettle on his hotplate. Belle follows him and slumps down on the cot, propping up her chin like her head’s too heavy with melancholy to be held up, and her back curves under all that sadness. Now, what would a father do in a situation like that? Gold’s shoulders sag. Her gloom is contagious and turning the back room of his shop into a stuffy prison. For a while he pretends to be occupied with the teapot and measuring loose tea - maybe a crumb less for the perfect taste, or one more? - but in the end, he has to face her. 

He takes a step towards her, but then stops again, agonizing over whether he should sit down at her side on the narrow cot - close enough to rub her between her shoulder blades - or if he should pull the stool from beneath his work bench closer and sit opposite her. He decides for the latter, giving her - and himself - more room. He has no qualms invading another person’s space to make them uncomfortable, using it as a way of intimidation and manipulation; but when it comes to opening himself up and offer closeness as a way of comfort, he’s helpless. Belle cut right through his defenses on the graveyard, when she’s claimed him, but now, she doesn’t take, and he doesn’t know what to give. 

He’s still searching for a way of opening a conversation when she sighs heavily. 

“There’s so much I don’t know about him. Today alone, I learned that he liked to fish - can you imagine? - and that he was involved with someone… It’s like learning about a complete stranger, and it hurts…” 

She doesn’t look at him, and maybe that’s why he dares placing his hand on her shoulder and squeezing gently. The raw pain in the lines of her face is something he can relate to, and in his own experience, the wordless comfort of another human being can already go a long way. After all, wordless comfort was what he found in Belle only the day before. And wordless comfort is what fathers should offer, though he has no idea how. 

He’s glad the kettle is whistling just then and relieves him from finding words to say. He can pretend to concentrate on the tea once more. 

“So, you found out he liked fishing. That’s already something, and in less than a day.” 

Belle scowls at him when he extends a cup of tea towards her. “No matter how much I find out, it will not give me back what I’ve lost.” 

Gold winces. He knows that pain, too. Inhaling deeply, he sits down again, and stares into the amber depths of his own tea. It has the color of Bae’s eyes. “No, it won’t. But nothing can do that. It’s gone. When your father died, he took his life with him, and nothing will bring that back. Finding out things about him isn’t about him. It’s about you, and what you do with that knowledge. Holding on to what you’ve lost will only bring you pain.” 

“I’m sure you have lots of memories with your son to revisit. I haven’t even that, so don’t tell me what to do with my pain.” She’s full of ire, he can hear that, but her easy dismissal of his pain forms a tight knot beneath his breastbone and sits there like a stone with needle-sharp ridges, grating his lungs with every breath he takes. 

“My memories are riddled with my failures. I see how I ignored his need to be noticed by me in all clarity, and the knowledge that I failed to see his struggles and thought everything was alright when it clearly was not is like a knife that keeps cutting me. He was suffering, and I failed to see it. I failed to help him, and if I hadn’t been so  feckless , he could still be alive. So don’t tell me I have it so much better. Pain and regret isn’t a competition.”

Belle hangs her head. “I’m sorry. You’re right,” she whispers. 

Gold places his cup on the shelf next to the cot and reaches for her shoulder again, the safest place to touch her. It wasn’t his intent to snap, and his stomach roils because he did exactly what he rebuked her for; he makes a competition of their pain. The truth is, he almost envies her, for she doesn’t carry the guilt of having failed her father like he failed his son. “Don’t be. I should be sorry.” 

Her lips twitch, but it’s not quite a smile. After they’ve finished their tea in silence, she straightens, and takes a deep breath. “Leroy told me that my father used to go to the Rabbit Hole, so that’s where I’ll go next…”

Gold only nods. Maybe she’ll find out something personal about her father, but more likely it’ll just be the blabbering of an old and lonesome man. He isn’t going to point that out, though; let her have hope. And if he isn’t the one to shatter her illusions, all the better. 

She’s not back yet when he closes the shop, and he drives by the Rabbit Hole on his way home. But he doesn’t go inside. After a few minutes of watching the entrance door from his car, he starts the engine again and drives home. Belle’s old enough to find her way home, he tells himself, and he doesn’t want to intrude. When she’s not home - and how easily it comes to think of his house as her home - when he’s finished with dinner preparations, he has to force himself not to pace the hallway, waiting for the phone to ring. Instead, he sits at the table, laid out for two, his empty plate before him, and debates whether he should go look for her or not. It’s already half past eight, and if he waits much longer, the dinner he prepared will go cold (that’s a lie, he placed it in the oven to keep it warm, but it will be dry for sure). He’s almost made up his mind when the phone rings, shrilly, yanking him out of his brooding. 

“Gold,” he snarls into the phone, and there’s the noise of music and loud voices on the other end.

“Erm, Mr. Gold? This is Jimmy, from the Rabbit Hole. Look, I’m really sorry about this, but I have this girl here, and she told me to call her daddy? She’s said that’s you…”

Gold closes his eyes and bites back a groan. “Is she alright?” He has to grind out the question between clenched teeth, and in the following pause he wonders if Jimmy of the Rabbit Hole even heard him.

“Yeah… Pretty drunk, though. She’s been here all afternoon.” 

“Give her some water. I’m coming to pick her up.” He hangs up without waiting for an answer. 

The air in the Rabbit Hole is as stale as three day old beer. Gold spots her immediately. She’s propped up on a stool at the bar, looking like she could lose hold any moment and just slip to the floor. She has a hard time focusing on him when he steps to her side and takes her arm, and she’s squinting at him like a drunken owl. 

“Teddy!” she exclaims, and the bar tender across from her flinches and shrinks a little. Gold narrows his eyes at the man. 

“Jimmy, I presume?”

Belle slips from her stool and wraps her arms around his neck, which compromises his impending stance. 

“Look, Mr. Gold, how you spend your time, or with whom is none of my business… If you get off on girls calling you Daddy, I’m not judging…” Jimmy lifts his hands and takes a step back, as if afraid Gold might leap over the counter and hit him with his cane. 

“She’s calling me Teddy, you moron. That’s my name.”

Belle plucks at his sleeve and breathes wetly against his neck. “Teddy, I don’t have any money left,” she murmurs. 

“Of course not.” He pays for her drinks - she’s consumed an impressive amount of alcohol - while she clings to him like the earth is shaking. “You really worked hard to deserve a scolding, didn’t you,” he rasps, while he guides her outside and to his car. She’s swaying and leans heavily against his Cadillac when he opens the passenger side door for her. 

“There.” He helps her onto the seat, and since she fumbles somewhat helplessly with the seatbelt, he fastens it for her, leaning over her body when he reaches for it. She smells like she rolled in a puddle of alcohol, and it’s slightly nauseating. When he climbs onto the driver’s seat, she sits with her head leant back and her eyes closed.

“Please make it stop,” she whispers. 

“Why on earth did you drink that much?”

“I don’t know. My glass just didn’t stay empty…”

Gold rolls his eyes and starts the car, and Belle whimpers. “Did you at least learn something about your father?”

“I… don’t know. Can’t remember…” She claws at the dashboard and breathes deeply. Gold drives slowly. The last thing he needs is for her to puke into his car. And they’d almost made it, were it not for a flaming red Mustang cutting them off and forcing Gold to jam on the brakes. Belle groans, doubles over, and vomits on the floor mat. 

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Gold winds down his window to let in breathable air, while Belle still retches. He’s eternally grateful that they reach his house just then, and he doesn’t care how he parks, as long as he gets to leave the car quickly. 

“I’m so, so sorry,” Belle sobs, when he opens the passenger door. Gold gives his best to ignore her stained clothes when he helps her out of the car, but he holds his breath and takes care not to touch any part of her that had contact with the contents of her stomach.

“You’re going to clean that, young lady.”

“Yes, of course. I’m sorry.” She keeps babbling how sorry she is, and she’s swaying so dangerously that he doesn’t dare to let go of her. Not bothering with even closing the passenger door again - any thief stealing his car smelling like that is welcome to it - he leads her inside and straight to the bathroom, where he places her inside the shower on the stool he keeps there for days when the pain in his knee is too much to stand up. He doesn’t feel the tiniest spark of pity when he turns on the water, not even when she flinches and nearly falls off the stool.

“Wait here while I go back and lock the car, then I’ll help you out of those clothes.” 

She nods, pale and shivering, looking rather miserable with her hair plastered to her skull and her clothes clinging to her skin. She hasn’t turned the temperature of the water up when he returns after binning the foot mat and leaving the seat and the footwell for her to clean later. The water is lukewarm, but she looks as if it’s icy. 

“Come on,” he grunts, and she doesn’t resist when he starts peeling her out of her blouse and skirt. He’s getting sprayed with water himself when he works on the closure of her bra, but he doesn’t care. Neither does Belle, who holds up her arms to make it easier for him to slip the bra off. He leaves the slip of baby-pink cotton, soaked and hiding nothing. Gold ignores the tugging sensation deep below his navel and concentrates on the task at hand. 

“Mind if I shampoo your hair?”

She shakes her head and closes her eyes, but opens them immediately again. Her head’s probably spinning. He knows the feeling only too well. 

Belle’s like a doll in his hands when he shampoos her hair, then rinses it out, and proceeds with lathering her with shower gel. He washes her arms and legs and back, rubbing her skin gently but thoroughly, but he doesn’t go near her breasts or panties. 

“At least you don’t stink anymore now,” he states when he’s finished and she’s wrapped in a towel. He averts his eyes when she struggles out of her knickers underneath the towel, though Belle doesn’t really seem to mind. She’s probably too drunk and gets only half of what’s happening. She’s leaning heavily against him when he rubs her dry, and he makes her sit down on the toilet so he can blow her hair dry without worrying she might fall over any moment. There’s no hesitance in him, not even a doubt about providing her with the help she needs, even if what he’s doing might be too intimate after knowing each other for only a day. And although his feelings aren’t exactly fatherly, his care never strays into questionable areas - at least he tells himself so while he rakes his fingers through her hair to help it dry faster. 

Belle’s chin sags down to her chest, her eyes flutter shut, and when he’s finished with drying her hair, he has to nudge her gently awake, for she dozed off. 

“I can’t carry you to bed,” he tells her, even though he would like to do so. But that would take things too far, so he just supports her when she staggers to the guest room. Her nightgown lies on her pillow, and he does his best not to ogle her when she drops the towel and waits for him to help her with slipping into the sheer gown. But it’s hard to ignore her bare skin, the goosebumps covering her breasts with her pebbled nipples… Gold swallows, but there’s still too much saliva in his mouth, and it’s not because he’s hungry. Not in the traditional sense, at least. 

“I need to clean your car,” she murmurs, just as he closes the buttons of her gown above her chest, and her voice sounds like the croak of a run-over toad. Pitiable, if he would feel pity. 

“Hush up. You’re going to bed now. I will wake you up at six in the morning, so you have plenty of time to clean the car tomorrow.”

“But…”

“But me no buts. I’ll get you some water and a bucket, and tomorrow we’ll have a serious word about this, understood?” It’s harder than he remembers to be firm, but she needs it now; he isn’t keen on having her drunk like this for all of two weeks. And since she asked him to play her father, he might as well be strict with her. 

When he comes back from fetching water and a bucket to place beside the bed, she’s already fallen asleep. He wakes her again, merciless, and moves her to drink some water, before he leaves her be at last. Then he can finally have his dinner. It’s not any different from most evenings, when he eats all by himself, but it feels painfully lonely, and the silence is earsplitting. 

He keeps his promise and wakes her at six in the morning, ignoring the protest she groans out. 

“Someone who drinks like that has to shoulder the consequences,” he informs her, and he notes with satisfaction that there isn’t the slightest tug in his loins when she stumbles out of bed all pasty and crumpled. 

He’s prepared a tray with cleaning agents, gloves and sponges along with a bucket of water downstairs, and when Belle comes down and detects it, the memory of last night seems to come back and hit her. Her shoulders sag, but she reaches for the tray without protest. 

“I’m so sorry,” she repeats once again, and Gold sighs.

“I know. I’m not mad, but since you asked me to play your father, I’m using this incident as a teaching moment. Don’t drink more than you can hold.”

“Yes, Teddy.” It sounds almost like  Daddy again, so soft is her voice, and Gold cringes.

He prepares breakfast while she’s outside cleaning his car and goes through his medicine cabinet in search of aspirin to ease eventual headaches. He’s just finished setting the table when she comes back in, her sweatpants and shirt stained with water. He places a glass of water in front of her when she slumps down on a chair and pulls her knees up, along with an aspirin in a pill glass. Belle takes it without even asking, and drinks the whole glass of water to wash it down.

“That could have been any drug,” he states. 

“Yeah, and if it had been any drug and I had asked, would you have told me the truth? Probably not. Also, if you would want to drug me and chain me to your radiator, last night would have been the time.” She closes her eyes and tilts her head back, her forehead crinkled in pain. 

“True. Hungry?”

“Lord, no. Just give me tea.” 

Gold represses a grin as he pours her tea. She’s suffering, and he still doesn’t feel the tiniest bit sorry for her. “Did you at least learn something about your dad, or was this whole ordeal for naught?”

“I did… I think. I now know that Jimmy the barkeeper knew him well, but didn’t know that he had a daughter. Apparently Moe was rather frequently at the bar after work to have a beer or two. He met with Leroy, and sometimes with Marco, another friend of his.”

“Ah. Yes, I know Marco. Are you going to talk to him, too?”

Belle straightens and rubs her forehead. “Yeah, but… not today. Are you going to drag me out again or do you let me stay and sleep it off?” 

Gold looks into his crocodile cup as if his tea provides him with an answer. Strangely, despite it’s been only a day, he trusts her more than before, and the idea of forcing her out of the house churns inside his stomach. She’s open and trusting towards him, much more than he deserves, and it’s this openness that has something wriggling and tickling inside him. He’s always been too withdrawn, and that’s another reason why he’s no longer a father. “No,” he says. “You stay and recover. Don’t want to risk you puking into my car again.” 


	6. Chapter 6

“I didn’t know Moe had a little girl.”

Belle sighs. “Yeah, apparently he liked to pretend I didn’t exist.”

Marco’s furry eyebrows wander upwards, and Belle’s almost sorry for making him feel so sad. It’s not his fault that her father forgot about her.

It’s always some sort of damper on the conversation when she answers the statement that inevitably follows her introduction, and Belle looks around in Marco’s workshop to give him a chance to recover. He takes up work on a piece of wood again, slow and bashful, until Belle can’t bear it any longer and turns back to him.

“I’m trying to get a picture of his life, and since all his stuff was already gone, I was wondering if you took some keepsake after the funeral…”

Marco stops working and smiles. “I did. You can have it, if you want…” He turns to a shelf in his back before Belle can say a thing.

“Oh, that’s not… I don’t wanna take your keepsake from you, I just wanted to learn something about my father…”

“Don’t you worry, child.” Marco picks something from the shelf and offers it to Belle. “My memories of my dear friend are here, in my heart. And I think this here belongs to you.”

In his calloused palm sits a heart-shaped lump of clay, painted red, with the word “Daddy” scratched into it. Belle stretches out her hand, but she doesn’t dare to touch it.

“I made that,” she whispers, and Marco urges her to take it.

“I thought it’s something Moe made for his father. It was on his bedside table.”

Belle picks up the clay heart and follows the crude letters scratched into it with her fingertips. “I made that when I was eight. He kept it.”

“I think it’s impossible to forget about your child. Maybe Moe didn’t talk about you, but he carried you in his heart.”

Belle closes her fist around the clay heart and presses her lips together to keep them from trembling. If Marco was right, why had Moe never talked to her after leaving?

She’s silent later, when she helps Teddy with dinner preparations - something he’s started on the third day she’s spent at his house, telling her that making dinner together seems like a good father-daughter thing to do. He tries hard to take good care of her, and Belle supposes that the guilt he feels (for robbing her of a glimpse of her father or for not being the best father he could be to his own son, she doesn’t know) makes him put extra effort into their every interaction. Yet, despite caring for her in a way that simultaneously robs her breath with his tenderness and has her ache, there’s still a distance that keeps them from being completely comfortable with each other. It’s as if Teddy holds his breath whenever she comes too close. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise - after all, they’re strangers - but it stings nevertheless, and Belle wonders if he thinks her crazy.

It’s when they sit down to eat that he finally asks. “You’ve been very melancholy all evening. Is something wrong?”

Belle feels for the lumpy clay heart in the pocket of her sweat pants and takes her time in answering. She can’t even say why she feels so sad and hopeless ever since she returned from Marco’s. It’s not as if anything she would learn could ever bring her father back, or the time she’s lost with him. Still, the loss grows more overwhelming the more she learns about him.

“I just… I feel very small today.” It isn’t really an answer that means anything, she knows that, but it’s the best she can do in trying to explain. Teddy licks his lips and the struggle he’s fighting shows on his face, just for a moment, in the deepening of the lines on his forehead and the way he draws his brows together. She’s already sorry she said anything at all.

“Do you want me to… brush your hair, later?” he asks.

Belle nods, even though she thinks that today, the intimacy the gesture creates is too little to fill the aching hollowness that resides inside her chest, where her heart usually sits. Yet it is not nothing. It’s more than Moe gave her, and she needs that today.

Later, when she sits on his bed, eyes closed, and lets the steady rhythm of brush strokes soothe her, there’s a mean little voice inside her, reminding her that one week is almost up, and soon she’ll have to go without the warmth that he provides.

“I can’t believe you’ve been as bad a father as you claim.”

He stills his brushing, and in the silence that unfolds, a shiver tickles down her spine. She doesn’t move, not even when he wraps her hair around his fist and pulls her closer. Even the downy hair on her cheek stands on end. “Wrong,” he says, and the strain in his voice electrifies her every nerve. “I never noticed when Bae was out of it. I simply didn’t notice him. And when I did, I failed to give him what he needed.”

“But you do notice when there’s something wrong with me. And you give me what I need…”

“That’s because I pay close attention to you. I messed up once. Don’t think I’ll let that happen again.” He turns his head, and she feels the tip of his nose brush along her temple. His warm breath tickles her ear. And just when she thinks he might press his lips to the spot below her earlobe, where her pulse races, he lets go of her hair and leans back again. “Are you going to meet someone else tomorrow?”

Belle finds herself panting, and swallows, trying to compose herself. “I am going to the diner. The mechanic, Billy, he told me that Ruby, the waitress, was on Moe’s funeral, too.”

“Moe, huh? No longer your father?”

Belle is tempted to say something terribly inappropriate, just to see how he reacts, but she holds it in. She asked him to play her father, and he does. No need to make things any weirder than they already are. “He stopped being my father fifteen years ago, when he left me and never looked back.”

Teddy cups her shoulders, and he rubs his thumbs in circles. The warmth and gentleness of his touch has a lump rising in her throat.

“I’m sure he did look back.”

Belle sighs. It’s hard to leave Teddy’s bed, and him, when all she wants to do is curl up in his lap and soak up his warmth. But that’s not what she asked him to give, and taking it could ruin the fragile balance they’ve established.

She’s taking a second breakfast at the diner the next morning, after having the first with Teddy. He makes her pancakes every morning and has her guess the secret ingredient (cinnamon, but she pretends to be clueless to humor him), and she’s still full, because his breakfast always is amazing. It’s a fair guess that she’ll have gained at least three pounds when the two weeks are over, but his cooking is absolutely worth it, and she has no regrets. At least not as long as her skirts still close.

Though, when Ruby in her tight (and impossibly short) skirt walks up to her booth and bends over to place a coffee in front of Belle, she forgets the no-regrets-rule for a moment and wonders if a girl like Ruby would ever look twice at someone like her. The thought flusters her, and she’s sure her face is beet red when she smiles.

“Can I ask you something?” Even her voice is jittery, and Belle hopes that Ruby doesn’t notice.

“Sure.” Ruby plucks the notepad from her apron pocket and gets ready to put down any order Belle might have.

“You were at my father’s funeral, right? Moe French?”

Ruby lets the note pad sink again. “Moe? Yeah, I was there…” She looks over her shoulder at the counter, deserted right now, and slips into the booth opposite Belle. “Granny told me that you’re Moe’s daughter. I’m sorry for your loss and everything.”

Belle’s pulse begins to steady, and her voice doesn’t tremble anymore when she thanks Ruby. At least she doesn’t have to rattle off her standard answer to the standard _I didn’t know he had a daughter_ phrase. “I’m trying to get a picture of who he was, as a person, and I’m wondering if you could help me…”

“Well, he was a regular here, but I don’t know a lot about him beyond that and the time he…” She’s cut off by Granny, who calls her name, sharply, and orders her to concentrate more on working and less on chit-chat. Ruby smiles in excuse and hurries to serve more coffee. Belle remains seated, drinking her coffee, but Ruby doesn’t come back. It’s when Belle pays for coffee and soggy pancakes that she gets another word with her.

“Your father was a nice guy… not one of the creepily-staring-at-your-tits-and-ass kinda guys, you know? I really liked him…”

There’s something in Ruby’s tone that makes Belle wonder if she’s been the one with whom her father had that on and off thing Leroy had been talking about. The idea that Ruby could have known her father in such an intimate way hurts, and she grapples for her purse and wants to leave, before Ruby can say another thing. But when she wants to squeeze past the waitress, Ruby clasps her arm and holds her back.

“Hey, are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine. Sorry, I have to go…”

“Maybe you should ask Granny about him. She spent the most time with him anyway, so…”

Belle no longer tries to free herself from Ruby’s grip. “Granny? But I already talked to her.”

Ruby bites her lips and lets go of Belle. She looks as if she’s said too much and doesn’t know how to undo it. “Well, they were friends, you know.”

It sounds lame, and Belle narrows her eyes. “No, I don’t know. What kind of friends?”

“I don’t know, honestly. They spent time together, that’s all.”

Belle doesn’t press further. Ruby apologizes with a shrug and slips away. When Belle turns, she sees Granny standing behind the counter, watching her with gleaming eyes and a dark frown, and she leaves quickly. She’s running away, Belle knows that, but she’s unable to confront the woman. So Granny and Moe were friends and spent time together, and Granny didn’t think it necessary to tell her when she first asked about her father. So maybe she wanted to keep all her knowledge of Moe to herself, jealously, and not share any intimate knowledge of him as a person with Belle. So what? It won’t bring Moe back to get mad over a thing like that. Yet, she is still inexplicably close to tears after walking all the way back to Teddy’s house and letting herself in with the key he’d given her. No matter how fast and far she’d walked, she couldn’t outrun the hurt. She doesn’t have a reason to feel betrayed, but she does, and her hands are shaking when she sets up a kettle to make herself some tea. She contemplates calling Teddy, because she feels like she has to be held, but at the same time, she feels childish and stupid over the tears falling from her eyes and the sobs breaking out of her when she reaches for her teacup on the dish rack. She’s nearly blind with those stupid, hot tears, and shaking so badly - over nothing, really - that she knocks against the rack and one of its feet slips off the marble kitchen counter beside the sink.

There’s only her own teacup and Teddy’s crocodile cup on the rack, and when its foot slips off the counter and the whole thing tilts, they slip, and topple, and Belle sees it but is unable to keep it from happening. It’s like watching a car crash in slow motion, you know what comes next, and no matter how much you don’t want it to happen, you’re unable to prevent it - Belle grasps for the first mug to tumble over the edge, but despite she manages to get her fingertips in contact, she fails to catch it, and Teddy’s crocodile cup - the cup his son made him, the last thing he has left of Bae - falls and shatters on the floor.

Belle sinks to her knees, refusing to believe what just happened, grasping shards and pressing them together as if that could undo what she just did. “No,” she whispers, but no matter how often she repeats it, it doesn’t change a thing, and the shattered cup in her hands refuses to come together again.

The biggest irony of it all is the other cup, hers, with the rose pattern, dangling precariously on its handle from the dish rack that’s still somehow up on the counter top.

Belle picks up the shards and places them on the counter, and for a moment she contemplates making them disappear. But then what? Teddy will notice his missing cup. It’s the only one he drinks from, and there’s no way she can hide it without him noticing instantly. She would have to leave, too. Disappear along with the cup. Her things would be packed up in a few minutes. She could stuff it all into her back pack, throw it into her car and drive off without ever looking back. She won’t learn anything else about her father anyway. There’s nothing left of him.

She closes her fist around the shard with the crocodile’s tail, so hard that it pricks her skin and draws blood. And if she runs? Teddy would never forgive her. It would prove that her father was right in abandoning her. She’s a despicable person. It was her fault after all. Didn’t everyone tell her how nice Moe had been? He had been a good person. And she… she isn’t. She destroys. Forces her way into other’s lives and takes their most precious things from them. She hurts people.

Belle goes upstairs to pack her bags. Teddy is going to hate her, and there’s nothing she can do to give him back the cup. She tries to tell herself that it’s only fair, in a way, but she knows it’s not, and nothing he would have done to her is as terrible as this.

 


	7. Chapter 7

Since he lost Bae, Gold hasn’t cared much for his life. He’s been mostly indifferent towards - well, anything. Coming home, going to work, it’s all the same. Work’s a little more pleasant, since he gets to scare other people. Home is just this silent, grey emptiness. Now, though, there’s this tickling anticipation in his belly when he thinks about closing up the shop and going home. He’s looking forward to it. The change has to do with Belle, of course, and he doesn’t like it. He doesn’t want it. He doesn’t need it. Belle’s going to leave his life again in a week, and then the grey emptiness will be so much more overwhelming, because he’ll remember how it was when it was gone, if only for a tiny moment, a glimpse of a day. 

He will remember how it was when he still had his son - despite the guilt and the self-recrimination over all his failings and mistakes, there have been good times, and being with Belle reminds him of those. The moments when he made breakfast for his son, or lunch, or dinner. When he took Bae to kindergarten, and later to elementary school. When he watched his son graduate from High School. The moments got fewer the older Bae got, but they were still there, sparse and interspersed. 

Though, his anticipation to get home to Belle isn’t only about feeling alive again and being reminded of his son, being reminded of how it is to have a family. There’s something else, a craving he just can’t quell completely. He wants her to be close, because he wants her. 

Whenever he offers to brush her hair, it’s a little bit out of the selfish desire to touch her, to be so close that he can feel the warmth of her body seep into his bones and feel his nerves brim with tension and yearning. It’s just that - he doesn’t take the edge off when she goes to sleep in her own room. He relishes the hardness, the longing, the heat and sensitivity. He wants to draw it out. 

And, in some way, he can’t take the edge off because he doesn’t have her permission. She doesn’t want him in that way, so a part of him consists of guilt because he can’t shut it off - at least not in an innocent, pure way like the situation would require. 

When he reaches home, it’s eerily quiet. Not that Belle is a very noisy person who surrounds herself with loud music or anything, but still, there’s a warmth to her presence, something lively, and when he enters his home now, it feels… empty. 

Gold walks slowly towards the kitchen, listening for something impossible to hear, like a heartbeat inside the house. The silence is heavy, like the dark cloud of a thunderstorm just before it starts raining. The kitchen is empty. Like a room in a house that's been uninhabited for quite some time. Like it's always been before Belle came to stay with him. He leaves the kitchen to go upstairs, not sure what he expects to find when he opens the door to the guest room. Though, if he's honest, he expects it to be empty. Holding his breath, he gives the door a soft push. It swings open with a creaking sound, revealing a room so neat and tidy that it’s as if there's never been anybody sleeping in the bed. As if Belle's never been there. The room seems to hold its breath too, and Belle, sitting on the bed, looks like a human sized porcelain doll. Like something belonging into a doll house. 

"Everything alright?" he asks, trying to fight off the growing dread that something terrible happened and nothing is alright.

"Not really," she says. 

Gold clenches his jaw, wishing he hadn't come up the stairs at all. "Can I do something for you?"

Belle smiles, but it looks crooked and sad. 

"Maybe a tea?” he offers. “A cup of tea makes everything better." He has to force his lips into a smile that doesn’t tremble.

"It does, doesn't it?" Belle stands and pats down her skirt. Her face is waxen, and she looks like she's headed for her execution. She must have learned something devastating. "Let's have a tea, then." 

She follows him quietly downstairs and into the kitchen, and Gold searches for a way to ask her what's wrong while he concentrates on setting up a kettle and preparing a teapot. She watches him like she's watching a funeral. 

"Did you tidy up?" he asks when he finds the drying rack beside the sink empty. Belle doesn't answer. It starts to irritate him, and he covers his frown by turning away, scanning the cabinet for their cups. He turns around when she doesn’t answer, and finds her looking miserable. It’s a look that’s somehow familiar, and it hits him like a punch to the stomach when he remembers where he’s seen it before: It’s the same look Sheriff Graham wore when he came to his doorstep to give him the news of Bae’s death. Gold reaches for the edge of the counter top behind him to have something to hold on. “Belle?”

She takes a deep breath, but she doesn’t meet his eyes. She looks at the floor as if her gaze is too heavy to be lifted up. “I cleaned, yes,” she whispers. She’s kneading her hands and worrying her lips and Gold wants to shake her to snap her out of it. But when he takes a step towards her, letting go of the counter and reaching out - to hug her, maybe, not to shake her - she backs away. 

Gold pulls his hand back and claws at his pants to get rid of the stickiness on his palm. 

“I cleaned, and I packed up all my things, and I wanted to leave.” Belle’s voice is hoarse, and it almost breaks over the last word. It makes his skin crawl. “But then I realized that that would make me into a person like my father was, and I just don’t want to be like that… I don’t want to leave without a word, without facing what I did, without… saying goodbye.” 

“Goodness, you sound like you killed someone.” 

Finally she looks up and meets his eyes, just when the kettle starts to whistle, and he’s too taken by the raw pain in her face as that he cares to take the water off the stove. Belle opens and closes her fists and the tip of her nose reddens. It spreads across her cheekbones, and she’s panting. Gold knows that something terrible happened, he knows it in his marrow and his gut, but he can’t bring himself to ask. And she can’t bring herself to tell him, apparently, for she opens her mouth and closes it again without a sound. Instead, she reaches for the handbag she’s carried down with her and extracts a small bundle of cloth. It clinks when she steps at his side and places it on the counter. His mind is blank, filled with dread, as if she’s about to show him a corpse and he’s refusing to believe it. 

“I am so sorry,” she whispers, when she folds back the cloth and reveals a handful of green and blue shards. 

Gold knows what it is that she shows him, shattered and in pieces, but he refuses to acknowledge it. It’s not true as long as he doesn’t accept it. Despite that resolution, he reaches out to touch a shard, and turns it. It shows a bit of the crocodile’s back. He knows it because he’s trailed his fingertips along the outline of his son’s crocodile for years. He knows every minuscule detail. It’s as much etched into his fingertips as it is painted on the cup his son made. 

“It was an accident… I’m so, so sorry…” 

He’s been silent for too long, he supposes, and that’s why Belle starts babbling. “It’s just a cup,” he murmurs. He can’t look at her, but even so, he feels her shock.

“It’s not just a cup!”

“It’s just a cup. Things break.”

“Yes, but this is the cup that your son made!”

Gold covers the shattered pieces with the cloth again and turns away. “It’s a cup. I have a whole cabinet full with cups. I have so many cups that I can drink my tea from a different cup each day for three weeks if I want to!” 

“So you’re just going to pretend that everything is fine and it doesn’t bother you one bit that I broke it?”

“What do you want me to say? It’s not as if there is anything that would change the facts. It’s broken, and that’s it.” He wants to step around her and leave - though he doesn’t know where he wants to go or what he wants to do; he just wants to get away from her. But Belle steps in his way and forces him to halt. 

“I know that nothing can change that it’s gone, but you could at least acknowledge the pain that its loss causes. Or the rage, or whatever emotion you feel!”

“Why, so that you can feel better about destroying the only thing I had left of my son?”

“No, of course not. But you need to allow yourself to feel, or it will eat you alive! You can’t just go on and pretend it never happened, or it never meant a thing!” She sounds desperate, and he can no longer avoid looking at her. But looking at her lets the pain flare up, blazing like a bush fire, and consuming him like one. Every single nerve in his body is so tense that he’s afraid he’s going to break if he doesn’t get away from the stubborn woman blocking his way. 

“What do you suggest? Should I make you pretend to be a cup to make me feel better? I’m sure that’s going to work out well!” He plants his cane between them like a barrier. With her clenched fists and raised chin, Belle looks ready to take him on. 

“Maybe it would make you feel better to break something. Letting it out can be cathartic…”

“There is nothing to be let out! It’s just a cup!”

Belle steps closer, pushing against his hands on the cane. The contact is like an itch on the soles of his feet and beneath his nails, maddening and impossible to get rid of. 

“I don’t believe you.”

“What do you want me to say? That I’m heartbroken? That I lost the thing that kept my son in my thoughts day after day, and reminded me not to forget him again, like I did when he was still alive? Well, here it is: I’m devastated. Shattered. But it doesn’t change a thing. It doesn’t bring the broken pieces together again.” 

Belle’s chest heaves with the deep breath she takes, and trembles when she exhales. Gold wants her gone. He doesn’t want to look at her any longer, doesn’t want to be reminded of the pain of losing something. He doesn’t want to see the tears that hang in her lashes like dew. 

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asks, sounding like a little girl. 

“No. There isn’t.” 

Belle takes another deep breath and reaches into her bag once more. She pulls something out and offers it to him on her open palm. It’s a lump of clay, red and remotely shaped like a heart. 

“What’s that?” He steps back, as if the thing in her hand could come alive and leap at him. 

“It’s a heart that I made for my father when I was a kid. Marco took it from his things and gave it to me. It’s the only proof I have that he still thought of me. I want you to have it.” Her hand is shaking, and she’s pale. 

He doesn’t want to, but he takes the heart of clay just to prevent her from dropping it. There’s a word etched into it, and when he reads it, he’s the one who almost drops it like something repulsive and slimy. 

“Do you think something you made for your father could replace something my son made for me? Is this some perverse game you’re playing? Is this still you doing your sick little daddy-daughter thing?” He needs to get rid of the lumpy heart, quickly, and he places it on the counter side to side with the little heap of shards covered in cloth. Belle pales even more. 

“That’s not what this is,” she whispers. 

His own cruelty twists his insides into a knot, into a wriggling nest of snakes, and he can hardly breathe. It’s too late to take it back, though, and he swallows, and hardens himself. She’s the one who screwed up, not he. “Then what is it? Because it looks a lot like you’re trying to make my son disappear so you can take his place. It looks a lot like you’re still punishing me.” 

“No! Please, Teddy, believe me, I didn’t do this on purpose!” Belle grasps his arm and holds on, as if she could convince him of her truth if she only holds on tight enough. He clasps her wrist and removes her hand from his arm. 

“Then give it a rest.” 

“I can’t…”

“Why not? You screwed up, and there’s nothing you can do to undo it. Just accept it.” He wants to turn away. Looking at her face, her watery eyes and wobbling chin becomes unbearable. It turns him into the monster of this tale, and he hates it. 

“I can’t! I just… I can’t.” 

“You can’t fix this, Belle. It’s done. A heart of clay doesn’t bring back Bae’s cup. Just stop pushing.” He steps around her and starts for the door. 

“Teddy…” 

“Just leave me in peace.”

“I can’t. Please, I just don’t want you to hate me.”

Gold pauses, rubbing his forehead. “I don’t hate you, Belle.”

“But you can’t look at me either. You’re just going to leave.” 

Now he turns, and the aimless, indistinct irritation flares up into full-blown rage. “You’re right, I shouldn’t leave. You should. Because this is my house, and you overstayed your welcome!” 

“You want me to leave?” 

“I do. You already packed your bags, so this doesn’t really come as a surprise, does it?” His voice cuts deeply, he can see it, but he ignores the gnawing guilt and hardens his face. 

“Please, Teddy, let’s talk about this…” She’s desperate, and he needs her gone before she can change his mind. He doesn’t want to feel the things she makes him feel, not anymore, not like this. 

“No. Leave. I don’t want to see you again.” 

She seems to crumble, to shrink, and he looks away when she passes him. He doesn’t turn his face when she pauses, and after a moment of silence, Belle starts for the door again. She doesn’t say another thing, and he doesn’t hold her back. It’s only when he hears the entrance door click shut that he breathes again. 

Knowing that she’s gone doesn’t make it better. Not one bit. 


	8. Chapter 8

When Belle enters the diner for the second time that day, her eyes are puffy and swollen, stinging and raw. She’s cried for at least an hour in her car before she calmed down enough to muster the courage of facing Granny. She wants to get it over with before she leaves Storybrooke for good. Staying any longer seems impossible when every minute spent in this town bears the chance of meeting Teddy somewhere. Her heart couldn’t take it.

At this time of the day, the diner isn’t as packed as during lunch time, but there’s still enough of a buzz to momentarily overwhelm Belle with noise and smell and heat. Blinking disorientation away, Belle searches for Granny.

She finds her behind the counter, as always, and Belle doesn’t take her eyes of the woman when she starts straight for her.

“I expected to see you back,” Granny says when Belle reaches her, and there’s something resigned in the way she leans against the counter and rests her hands on it.

“Why didn’t you tell me right away?” There is no use in approaching the subject gently, or in pretending that it isn’t about Granny’s relationship with Moe. But maybe it’s too head-on for Granny, for she narrows her eyes and scowls.

“Because I didn’t think it would make a difference. Moe never talked about you, I didn’t even know he had a daughter, and how’s that for me, huh? The man I loved and buried had a daughter, and out of the blue she turns up, wanting answers I cannot give.” There’s so much hurt in those words that Belle looks away. Any look seems like too much of an intrusion now.

“I’m sorry. I just… I guess you could tell me more about him than anyone else could, you know?”

“Sure I could. But why would I? Apparently Moe wasn’t the only one who never called, so why would you want to learn who he was now? It’s too late for that. You could just accept that.”

Belle isn’t prepared for this outright rejection, and it stings. “It’s not as if it could chip your memories of him to tell me about him. I cannot take anything away from you. And I don’t want to, either!”

Granny clenches her jaw, and Belle knows that she won’t give in. It’s too late, not only for her father, but also for the people in his life to accept her. Maybe she wouldn’t care, if she wouldn’t know about the relationship, but she does know, and knowing that her father was capable of love deepens the cut that wondering why he didn’t love her enough to care leaves. “Please?” she whispers, but Granny shakes her head. In a way, Belle understands it, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. She doesn’t want Granny to see her tears, so she turns and leaves, almost blind.

She’s almost at the entrance gate to the terrace when someone calls her back. It’s Ruby, smiling apologetically as she approaches her. Belle hates the pity she sees in Ruby’s eyes.

“Give her some time. She usually comes around.”

Belle snorts, but it’s a feeble attempt to mask a sob. “I don’t have time. I don’t have anywhere to stay and I have to find a place to go, a job, something… and there’s nothing for me here. I’m lost.”

“I’m so sorry. You could crash on my couch? I’m living with Granny, though… but that could give you a chance to win her over?”

Ruby offers her help so readily, but Belle wishes she hadn’t. Between her fall out with Teddy and Granny’s rejection, she needs time to herself, and leaving this town holds the promise of finally being able to breathe again. “Thank you, but I think I’ll rather leave this place…”

Ruby doesn’t try to hold her back - no one ever does - and Belle was never quite as alone as she is now. The sky’s bleeding pink and red color when she starts her car and drives down Main Street, heading out of town. There’s one last stop left, and it’s almost dark when she enters the graveyard and searches for her father’s resting place. The air is heavy with the scent of the woods nearby, and although the light is nearly gone, the warmth of the day still lingers on for a spell. Belle sinks down to her knees at Moe’s grave, and for a while, the words she came here to speak evade her, just like the first time she came here. But she was with Teddy then, and somehow that made it easier. Now she’s alone, it’s just her and the night and her father’s headstone.

“So, this is goodbye,” she murmurs. “The most goodbye we ever had. Why did you never call me back? Why did you never write, or call, or visit? What did I do that I never was important enough for you to come around?”

Belle pauses, shifting on her knees. The ground beneath her is soft, humid, and despite her skin itching from blades of grass cutting her, she doesn’t want to get up. She rather curl up on the ground, pretending it to be her father’s lap.

“You left me, and all that remained was the fear that no one could ever love me. If my own father doesn’t look back, who would ever even like me? You left me, and now I’m lost. And I fear with every little mistake I make that someone will hate me for it. How dare you, Daddy? How dare you…”

The night settles silent like a blanket, and the hollowness she feels inside echoes all around her. Far above, the stars sneak out, and below, Belle is smaller and lonelier than ever.

“What a sorry girl I am. Look at me: talking to a headstone and whining about things in the past. And you know what the worst thing is? I will forever be broken, because I can’t forgive you for just leaving me and dying without ever telling me why. How unfair is that? I hope you watch this and feel ashamed that you are the reason why your daughter is having a pity-party all by herself, in a graveyard. I hope you regret it.”

Belle’s insides are raw, her voice thick, scratching in her throat, and something big and heavy sits inside her chest and compresses her lungs. She’d like to punch the ground like she’d like to punch her father for abandoning her, but it would be a poor substitute, so she just sits there and bites the back of her hand in hopes of fighting back the pitiful sobbing that kicks her organs around and upside down inside her.

“I’m sure he regrets it.”

Belle flinches at the sound of the voice and scrambles to her feet. Behind her, cloaked by the dark of the night, stand Teddy, a shadow between shadows. Belle swallows, pressing her hand to her chest to soothe the hard beating of her heart.

“What are you doing here?” Her voice trembles, and she’s ashamed for it.

“The same as you, I suppose. Facing regrets and failures of the past.”

“And eavesdropping, apparently.”

“You weren’t exactly quiet. I couldn’t help it.”

Belle steps back, her hands clenched to fists. “You could have just left me alone. There’s no need to tell me again that you don’t want to see me again. I was on my way out of town anyway, so you’ll be spared my obnoxious presence.”

“If that was what I wanted, yes, then I could have ignored you. But that’s not what I want.”

Belle wants to take another step back, but she’s rooted to the spot, and if she moves, her knees are going to give out under her. So she stands still and holds her breath when Teddy closes the gap between them and steps so close that she can almost feel him. “What do you want, then?” she asks, and her words tremble as much as her knees.

“Look, you were right. It wasn’t just a cup, and it hurt me immeasurably to see it broken. But on the other hand, it was just a cup, and despite the pain that its loss inflicts, it’s far more painful to see you so heartbroken over it. I don’t hate you, and I failed at telling you that. I needed to come here to remember that we shouldn’t scorn the living in favor of the dead.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that I want you to come home. If you want to, that is.”

“Why, so we can continue my sick little daddy-daughter thing?”

Teddy winced and lowered his head. “I rather not continue. I don’t want to play your father.”

“Then what do you want?”

“I want us to be friends… And I want us to give solace to each other. You see, my house has been empty for so long, and I only realized how much life you brought when you were gone… and I missed you. So, if you want to, maybe you could stay a little longer?”

Belle bites her lip. She wants nothing more than to feel home, and she knows exactly what Teddy means. Maybe their friendship started out somehow weird, but he filled that hollow spot inside her heart, and leaving him hurt more than leaving Moe’s grave behind. Her father was never really there, but Teddy was, and in the short time she spent with him, she’s grown attached to him. But that alone is no reason to stay. She has to grow up, and the fact remains that she needs a job, a place and a life of her own.

“I would love to. But I have no reason to stay, and I can’t just drift around forever, from one place to the other…”

“And do you already know where you want to go next?” He sounds as if he’s holding his breath, and Belle tries to swallow down the lump blocking her throat.

“Not really,” she admits then, unable to lie to him.

“Then why don’t you stay until you have a plan? Until you know where you’re going?”

Belle’s helpless against the hope in his voice, against the allure they hold, against the need they spark between her ribs. “It would only be until I have a job,” she says, and in the dark, she sees his teeth glint in a smile.

“Of course. I don’t wanna be the one holding you back.”

“Just for a few days?”

“A few days,” he agrees. Belle reaches for his hand, and he meets her and laces his fingers with hers. They walk towards the parking lot in silence, and Belle already dreads the moment when they have to part to drive back to his house in separate cars. But when they leave the cemetery, there’s only her own car waiting.

“I walked. Needed some air and exertion to clear my head,” he admits.

“Need a ride?”

Teddy just smiles, and it’s oddly _right_ when he climbs into her car. It’s when they walk up to his porch and Belle waits for him to open the door, her back pack in hand, that he hesitates. In the yellow light above the door, his cheeks darken. “There’s… a bit of a chaos inside…”

Belle thinks he’s jesting (after all, when she left the house a few hours earlier, everything was in perfect order), but when she enters behind him, something crunches beneath her feet. He flicks on the light, and Belle is greeted by a field of debris.

“What…”

“I weeded out some of my porcelain.”

“No kidding, huh?”

This time, there’s no mistaking his blush, and it’s oddly endearing. “Why don’t we go upstairs and leave the cleaning for tomorrow?”

“We could do that. We could also use this as a teaching moment.” Belle grins. She isn’t sincere, and her teasing is a careful one. Their new-found harmony might still be fragile, and she doesn’t want to lose it before they’re even fully inside the house.

Teddy hangs up his blazer and takes her hand again. “I rather go upstairs.”

Belle doesn’t resist when he leads her up the stairs, but when they reach the hall leading to his bedroom - and the guest room - he seems to lose momentum. He pauses between doors, as if he isn’t sure what to do now that he made it so far. Maybe it’s because every single kiss, every physical intimacy so far has been initiated by her rather than him, but Belle does nothing to meet him halfway. It doesn’t make things easier, she knows that. Despite his attempts at strictness when he played being her father, he needs a clear, unabashed and assertive yes from her before he makes any move, and Belle treasures that about him. Still, she’d prefer to be scooped up in his arms and swept into his bed now, instead of navigating the uncertainty between bedrooms. She doesn’t even know if that’s where they’re headed, or if they’re really just going to be friends.

“Would you… brush my hair? Just one more time?” she asks, too shy to meet his gaze. She doesn’t want to be just friends. She wants to take what she yearned for every single time they’ve been sitting on his bed, close, but never close enough. But while their relationship is in this precarious nowhere-land between obligation and affection, she doesn’t know how to go about it. Better steer back onto familiar grounds, to the intimacy of every evening’s ritual.

“To soothe you?”

“It’s been a long day. I feel so lost…”

“I’d love to do it. Let’s just change into something more comfortable first?”

Belle nods. They’ve done that so often by now that it shouldn’t cause this trembling tension, but the prospect of being so close to him while wearing their nightwear has her every nerve taut and brimming in feverish heat. It’s never been innocent before, at least not on her part, but she’s managed to ignore the desire building deep in her lower belly by reminding herself of the deal they had. Now, that the deal is off the table, her skin hungers for his touch with a desperation she’s never anticipated. This time, when she slips into her sheer nightgown, it’s with the goal to beguile, not just because it’s the only nightdress in her bag.

She enters his bedroom covered in goosebumps, nipples pebbled and a tell-tale dampness between her thighs, and her entrance takes his breath away. She revels in his reaction, in his helpless gaping and the way he swallows. He wants her, too, it’s unmistakable, and yet, Belle twists and turns the hairbrush in her hands until the handle is slippery from her damp palms, and she’s panting more with every step she takes towards the bed. This is somehow harder than taking a stranger in a parked car. There’s so much more at stake, and Belle runs out of momentum in the middle of the room, between the door and his bed. Teddy clenches his fists around the edge of his mattress.

“Come here,” he rasps, and Belle is drawn forward by his voice, so hoarse and warm that it feels like calloused fingertips scratching every inch of her skin inside and out. She sinks down at his side, and gulps when he covers her hand holding the brush with his warm palm. It takes a moment for her to let go of the brush and turn her back towards him, so he can easily reach her hair.

If only it were easy to tell him that she wants so much more than just this. The words dance on the tip of her tongue, but she doesn’t get them out, and so remains silent. Teddy fans out her curls and starts brushing them carefully. She feels his fingers shake, and it makes her heart beat faster, frantically. Every slow stroke of the brush charges the air between them until it crackles and even the hair on her arms stands on end. Belle shivers when he gathers her hair, twists it, and drapes it over her shoulder. His hands are still resting on her shoulders when he leans forward, and his breath grazes the nape of her neck.

“I longed to do this,” he whispers hoarsely, before he places a kiss on her neck. It’s a warm, soft kiss, and it lets her shiver, and pull her shoulders up with the pleasure rippling through her. She’s helpless against the moan he draws from her. He kisses her again, just below where he placed the first kiss, and Belle melts boneless into his arms, bending her head to give him better access to her skin. Teddy wraps one arm around her waist, splaying his fingers, his thumb brushing along the underside of her breast, and Belle arches her back to lure his hand further up. She wants him to cup her breast, she wants him to touch her everywhere, firmly and assertive, but he’s deaf to her silent pleas. Instead, he moves behind her, turning into a sitting position that allows her to sit between his open legs and lean against his chest.

When she does, she feels him hard and hot against the small of her back, and he tenses when she rolls her hips, so much that she sucks in air and swallows a groan when she imagines her nightgown clinging to her skin between them, with a wet patch of his seed. He drops his hands to her hips and pulls her closer, and Belle leans forward, so that he can kiss her neck again and shower her with the pleasure it elicits.

“Please kiss me again,” she murmurs, when she has to wait for his lips, and she gasps when he strokes up her sides, his thumbs grazing up along her spine, cupping her shoulders after encompassing her ribcage with his large hands.

“Here?” He presses his mouth to the nape of her neck, and Belle sighs, tilting her head to the side.

“More to the side, below my ear…”

“Ah. Here.” His teeth graze her skin where her neck meets her shoulder, and upwards, and this time Belle can’t hold back the groan when he bites her, gently, just where she wanted his kiss.

She arches her back again when he circles her waist once more and his hands come to a rest on her stomach. When he doesn’t move neither up nor down, she covers his hands and guides them up, to cup her breasts, and she keens when he brushes his thumbs over her nipples. She aches for more, but Teddy’s touch is slow and languid, almost idle, as if he has all the time of the world and she isn’t burning up for him. Belle needs more, more pressure, more touch, and she pushes against his palms, hoping to sate the yearning, but when he kisses and sucks on her neck and pinches her nipples, the ache only grows. So she takes his hand again and pushes it down, between her legs, to cup her sex.

“Should we really do this?” he murmurs, and all Belle can do is roll her hips, rubbing up against him, and groan.

“Please, Teddy, I want you. I need you.”

“Do you really? Or is this just solace again, and comforting each other?”

Belle stills. She’s not ready for definitions and labels, and his asking for one puts a damper on her need. And how can he be so mistaken about the nature of her desire? “Does this feel like I need to be comforted to you?” she asks, pulling up her nightgown so his fingers meet her naked, damp flesh. He shudders behind her, groans, and parts her folds with his fingertips.

“God, you’re so… slick,” he whispers, his hot breath meeting her cheek when he presses his mouth against her face.

“That’s because I want you. But if you don’t want me…” They could stop. She doesn’t say it, because she doesn’t want them to stop, but she doesn’t want to run him over either.

Teddy wriggles, pushing her away, but before Belle fully understands what’s happening, he lowers her to lie on her back at his side and bends over her. It’s almost too much to meet his eyes, so intense is his gaze, but he’s too close as that she could look anywhere else but at him. “You have no idea how much I want you, Belle. But only if this isn’t just some quick fix for the emptiness inside you. Because this will never be enough to fill it if it’s just sex.”

“So what is it for you if it’s not just sex?”

He narrows his eyes, and Belle bites her lip. Too easily, her question could be understood as admittance that for her, it is only that, meaningless sex, when it’s anything but. She doesn’t get to tell him as much, though, for he cups her chin and keeps her still, locking eyes.

“It’s so much more than just that. I was alone for so long, and I only began to feel alive again when you came along. For me, this goes deeper than anything I felt in a long time, but I understand if it’s not the same for you. You moved something inside me, Belle, but it took a broken cup for me to see it.”

“One?”

“Well, several. All of them, to be honest.”

Belle smiles, and kisses the pad of his thumb when he traces her lips. “I want you to fill my emptiness,” she whispers, and Teddy chuckles.

“We’re so cheesy,” he says, before he finally bends down and kisses her. His mouth on hers is tender, warm, and the stubble on his chin scratches her skin and contrasts with the softness of his lips and tongue, stoking the fire deep inside Belle. She rolls her hips and sighs when he slides his hand back between her legs. Drinking the sound from her lips, he deepens the kiss and spreads the wetness from her entrance between her folds, rubbing slowly, gently along her clit, until Belle, in desperate need for air, yanks her face away and gasps. She claws at his shoulders, rakes through his hair, rolls and arches and whimpers, until he finally listens to her pleading and slips a finger inside her, crooks it, and slips his free hand around the back of her skull, turning her head so he can claim her lips again. The pleasure rolls in waves through her body, and Belle digs her heels deep into the mattress to gain some leverage, some resistance, so she can thrust her hips and clench her insides in a feverish rhythm. She’s close, so close that everything’s too much, too intense, and she has to break, or she’s going to fall from her peak into nothingness.

“Just let it happen, sweetheart,” Teddy murmurs, planting a row of kisses down her chin, down her jaw, until he reaches her throat and plants a bite there, tender, but possessive nonetheless. It’s then that Belle cries out and arches up, tense like a bow while her climax washes through her.

Teddy holds her, brushes her damp hair out of her face and kisses her eyebrows, her eyelids, the tip of her nose, murmuring nonsense in between kisses, until her breath has steadied and she’s no longer convulsing from aftershocks.

Belle comes back to herself when he rubs against her side, remembering that he’s still waiting for his need to be sated. But when she reaches down to cup him through the fabric of his pajama pants, he turns awkwardly, clasping her wrist.

“You don’t need to…”

“But I want to.” Belle pulls her arm from his grip and reaches for him again. He thrusts back his head when she closes her hand around him, rubbing him tentatively. His helpless reaction, the groan escaping him, his hips twitching, it all feeds the pride blooming in her chest, and she sneaks a hand into his pants to close it around his prick. She relishes his skin feeling like velvet, and the dampness on his tip, the hardness, but she relishes the little sounds she draws from his lips even more. He doesn’t resist her touch any longer, instead reaching down to cover her hand with his to guide her, showing her how tight he wants her to grasp him and how fast he needs her to rub up and down his length. It doesn’t take long before he pants and buries his face in her hair, pressed to the crook of her neck, gasping incomprehensible words against her skin.

“Oh god, Belle, I… I can’t hold back…”

“I don’t want you to hold back. Let go, Teddy, just let go…”

He comes with a grunt, spurting hot seed onto her wrist and into his pants, and Belle keeps stroking until he finally relaxes and rolls onto his back. She wipes his seed on his pajama pants before she pulls her hand out and slides it around his waist to hold him, resting her head on his chest and listening to his heart beat.

“That was beautiful,” she says, dipping her nose into the hollow between his collar bones.

“It was. You are amazing.”

Belle giggles. “You know, I can imagine coming back here once I have a job and a flat, and doing that often.”

“I happen to own quite a few houses, in case you want to settle here.”

She smiles, and raises herself up to kiss his nose, and his lips. “We’ll see,” she says.


End file.
